Norwegian Longhouses

From: Edward G McDonald <EGM_at_...>
Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2001 17:06:23 -0000


Jeff asks: "What was done in the steads of Norway? Does anyone know?"

A bit of background first: I am half English and half Norwegian. My mother lives in Bergen on the west coast of Norway and I have lots of relatives with farms (or at least bits of farmland) up the coast from Bergen to Tromso (Tromso is way up in the Arctic Circle - about 70 latitude - it gets an amazing amount of snow). The west coast of Norway is very mountainous and on the Gulf stream. This means that it gets a lot of rain in the spring, summer and fall.

Most of my family have barns and outhouses on their land. These are quite old drystone buildings with turf roofs. The turf is some 6-9 inches thick. The turf is not soil as such, but very fibrous, like peat in some ways, it is filled with the roots of the grass, etc and very waterproof. It only seems to be green in spring, when it shoots. The rest of the time I have seen it, it is quite dark, again like peat. The roofs are very strong. You can happily stand and jump up and down on them (as a kid I have done so). The roofs are sloped, rising to a shallow peak in the centre and the width of the building is determined by being able to get a strong roof. It needs to be strong to hold the weight of snow in winter. It is sloped so that when the snow begins to melt, the snow can slip off and also so puddles won't form on it when it rains and thus seep in.

The ones described above are barns, etc. They are of a simple single drystone wall construction. I once visited a "theme village" of old restored buildings, you know the kind of thing - "How our ancestors lived". The living houses were of a similar construction to the barns, but lined with wood. Lining living quarters with wood evidently made them much warmer. However, these were of late dark ages and medieval periods and the animals did not live with the people by then.

Hope this helps on the visualisation.

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