Viking Lutheran Church
church building in Maddock, United States of America

Viking Lutheran Church is located in South Viking Township in Benson County, and it is a historic wood-frame church in rural Maddock, North Dakota. The congregation was founded in 1887, and the church was built in 1903 with some Gothic elements. The church interior was originally painted with angels, stars, and other elaborate decorations within the sanctuary, but the paintings were covered during renovations. The church also features a unique stained glass window portraying Martin Luther on the North side of the church and Jesus holding a lamb on the South side, among many other elaborate stained glass windows.
The church was formally dedicated in 1909 when it hosted a regional synod.
A rose window blown out in a storm before 1927 was replaced by plain glass.
It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
The congregation is still active.
The address to Viking Lutheran Church is 5161 31st St NE; Maddock, North Dakota 58348.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Viking Lutheran Church” is church building in Maddock, United States of America. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Viking, Lutheran and Church, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “church building in Maddock, United States of America” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7929471. Authority coordinates are 47.862, -99.490. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1887, 1903, 1909 and 1927.
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This entry incorporates text from “Viking Lutheran Church” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.