Árbók Hins íslenzka fornleifafélags - 01.01.1996, Page 89

UM NÁÐHÚS
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connection with other farm buildings. A legal clause stating that savage dogs could be
killed in kamrar just as in other places could indicate that these buildings were intended
to serve more than one purpose. Olafs saga Tryggmsonar mentions an unusually large
latrine on a farm in Norway where 11 men could sit on each side. The remains of a
building have been found at the ruined farm Stöng in Þjórsárdalur, Iceland, with stone
gutters along the walls on two sides which has been interpreted as latrine in which many
people could sit at the same time.
There are fewer references to smaller katnrar, though examples are known from
excavations in Bergen, Norway. The small room in a recently-excavated mediaeval farm-
house in the Western Settlement in Greenland may be a kamar.
There are few written sources about katnrar from the 16th century and thereafter.
There is mention of a kamar in a deed dated 1530 from Skagafjörður in the north of the
country, and of one built on the island ofViðey, near Reykjavík, shortly after 1540. A
building in the Stóraborg complex on the south coast may be kamar, but this is not certa-
in. In about the middle of the 18th century, a toilet was built in Búðardalur in the west of
the country, and they appear to have been very rare in Iceland at that time.
The kamar that was built at Grund in Eyjafjörður (in the north) in the early 19th
century is believed to be the first of its kind to have been built in Eyjafjörður for several
centuries.
With regard to how rare references to toilets or latrines become as one moves closer
to the present time, it seems reasonable to assume that other facilities existed. It is likely
that people used rooms that were screened off or closed by a curtain, corners of one of
the farm buildings, or cowsheds with doors leading directly into the farmhouses.
During the second half of the 19th century there was a strong movement towards
improved hygiene, including the building of kamrar. A source from 1844 mentions 35
kamrar in Reykjavík, at a time when there were only 85 wooden houses. By the end of
the century, katnrar accompanied most of the new wooden or masonry houses in the
towns and villages, but they were nowhere near as common in the turf farmhouses in the
country. In many old farmhouses at the beginning of the 20th century people used
buckets with seats over the top during the cold winters, but otherwise they went out to
the cowsheds, other outbuildings or sheltered spots out of doors. Water-closets were
generally not set up in turf farmhouses.
The author considers it likely that separate katnar buildings on farms were rare from
the 16th to the mid-19th century; it is likely that toilet facilities were indoors in the
form of a bench above a bucket.
The paucity of sources on toilets is probably partly attributable to the fact that it was
considered inappropriate to mention them. As a result of the poverty of written records,
and fact that wooden items generally do not survive, the changes over the centuries have
tended to be overlooked. In inventories of furnishings, the benches and buckets used in
toilets would not have been distinguished specially from other benches and containers.