Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2010, Page 28

ORRI VÉSTEINSSON
swept off the floors. They seem to me
however, to be the principal reason for the
non-accumulation of farm-mounds. At
Stóraborg there do not seem to have been
wooden floors in any of the buildings in
any period, whereas at Laufás parts of the
farm-house had wooden floors according
to descriptions of the buildings surviving
from the 16th century onwards. Even if
only a limited proportion of the total floor
space had wooden floors, they were the
important parts, the living quarters and
reception rooms. It is likely that they set
the standard for the levels the earthen
floors of the rest of the building had to be
kept at. It is also important in this context
that the wooden floors are primarily
found in those rooms where - had they
had earthen floors - accumulation would
have been most rapid.
The presence or absence of wooden
floors may be seen to relate to wealth and
status; there was clearly more wooden
panelling and fumiture in the households
of the elite. It does not seem that this
affected farm-mound accumulation
directly however. Stóraborg was not a
low status site, although it may not have
been as rich as Laufás, and Bessastaðir
would then not be expected to have
developed the enormous farm-mound
which it evidently did. It is possible that
the fuel-consumption of the elite was so
much greater than that of common house-
holds that it cancelled out the check on
earthen floor build-up caused by wooden
floors. It is also likely that architectural
traditions, such as the prevalence of lofts
or storeys, muddy the waters here; it is
quite possible that the Stóraborg equiva-
lents to the wooden floored and panelled
rooms of Laufás were raised above the
rooms for which we have archaeological
information.
The mechanics of farm-mound
accumulation: floors
It is the nature of earthen floors that they
increase in thickness with time. Matter
from the surrounding walls and roof will
become deposited on the floor, as will
matter carried in from the outside on the
soles of people’s feet. Ash and other
waste created by people’s activities were
however undoubtedly the most signifi-
cant factors in the build-up of the floors.
At Stóraborg the floors in some houses
could be as much as 0,5 m thick (Fig. 9).
In many of those cases it seems that ash
was intentionally deposited on the floors,
probably to keep them dry. Straw or rush-
es for the same purposes cannot be ruled
out although such remains are much more
difficult to detect and are not well docu-
mented in the ethnographic literature. In
other words earthen floors can grow
thicker through time on account of both
intentional and unintentional deposition
of materials.
If, for the sake of argument, we imag-
ine that a floor has become 10 cm thick
when a house is rebuilt it is likely that
even if the house is completely levelled,
it will only be down to the level of the
floor - mucking out the floor at that stage
will have limited utility. Leaving it in
however will mean that a corresponding
thickness of the walls will also be left. If
this house has the dimensions of 20x5 m
that means that 5-9 m3 of turf will be left
in the ground (depending on the width of
the walls), along with the old floor (with
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