Árbók Hins íslenzka fornleifafélags - 01.01.1978, Page 63

fornir húsaviðir í hólum
65
SUMMARY
In the middle ages the farm Hólar in Eyjafjörður distriet in northern Iceland
was owned by prominent and wealthy families This was refleeted in the buil-
dings, both the farm-houses proper and the church being bigger and finer than
the average. However, in tlie second half of the lðth century the fai-m had a
somewhat lower status than formerly, and the farm-houses built in that period
show a typical farm complex on the last stage of traditional Icelandic building
customs. Most of the houses in this complex are still existing in their old place,
although they are not used as living-quarters any more. In all these houses there
are among the timbers many, which doubtlessly come from older buildings and
must havc been reused when the farm was built. More than likely some of them
had been reused over and over again, in one farm building after the other. In
1965—66 and 1977—78 the author of this paper made a thorough study af all
these reused timbers, in order to elucidate what kind of houses they were part
of in the beginning. The paper is a documentation of this survey, as well as
an interpretation of the original function of each individual timber.
One of the farm-houses still retains the name skáli, a term which in former
times was strictly associated with the house used as sleeping-quarters for the
whole hcusehold, although it has lost this meaning in modern usage. The author
demonstrates that in the Hólar skáli (on the last stage used as a storehouse) a
considerable quantity of the old skáli timbers are preserved, sufficient to enable
him to reconstruct tlie house. It was of a great help that more than half of these
old timbcrs were found to bc still in their original position. Purthermore planed
mouldings, profusely used as decorations on the edges of several of the timbers,
help to date the house to the 17th century approximately. On the whole the infor-
mation gleaned from the slcáli timbers is a valuable contribution to a correct un-
derstanding of the skáli (sleeping-house) as such, which through the ages was the
most important house on every Icelandic farm. No such building has been
preserved with its inner arrangement intact, but at Keldur in southern Iceland
there is a skáli which has retained many original features. Now the Hólar
timbers come as a valuable addition.
It is the author’s opinion that the socalled skemma (storehouse) is mostly
built of timbers from an older house or houses, which certainly had been built
in stave construction. In order to throw light upon this, the author traces the
history of two successive church buildings at Hólar, both of them socalled turf-
built churches, i.e. with sheltering walls and roofs of turf, although the houses
in themselves were pure wooden structures. In this paper the older one of these
churches is called „turf-built church I“, built some time before 1674, torn down
1774, and the later one „turf-built church 11“ built 1774, torn down 1853, when
the still existing wooden church was erected. It is made clear that the timbers
from church I were diligently reused when church II was built. The old timbers
now observed in the skemma are in all likelihood these very same church timbers,
and among them there are even a few much older, such as a plank decorated
in the Ringerike style and therefore hardly younger than from the ca 1100.
The autlior’s close study of all these still existing timbers reveals as an establis-
hed fact that church I was built in a pure and fully developed stave construction,
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