The purpose of this sale was the intention of improving the poor public finances in the Kingdom of Denmark-Norway after the Great Northern War.
This event is often referred to as "the great church sale" (Norwegian: det store kirkesalget).
As early as 1710, King Frederick IV had decided to sell the Norwegian churches, but this was not done at that time.
Nobel eventually managed to sell about half of the churches, mostly those that had profitable land attached to them.
Interest in the sale increased when the government clarified that the new church owners could collect the tithe from the congregation directly.
Since the Kingdom was not great at paying its debts during this period, it was often desirable for those people to buy churches as a way of ensuring that they could claim the money owed to them by the government.
[1][2] In total, the government took in around 210,000 rigsdaler from the sale,[1] which equates to approximately 1.5 billion kr in today's money value.