While traveling in Norway in 1839, Dahl again visited Vang. He found the stave church still standing, beside a newly built larger log-built church seating 230 parishioners. Demolition of the old one was imminent. Dahl was more than ever convinced that the stave church must be preserved as a cultural monument. He proposed without success to have it re-erected as a Royal Chapel in Christiania, or as a museum church adjacent to the medieval Haakon's Hall in Bergen. Count Herman Wedel Jarlsberg announced his willingness to place it in his park at Bogstad manor near Christiania, but he died before the plan could be carried out.