Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2010, Page 32

ORRI VÉSTEINSSON
mouldering which could be detrimental
to the health of the inhabitants.
This evidently changed and people
stopped digging out floors unless pavings
or wooden floors compelled them to. The
reasons for this are no doubt complex but
two factors can be identified which
undoubtedly contributed to this develop-
ment.
Floor maintenance as habitus
Just like keeping our modem floors clean
is a habitus, something we do because it
is done, and we certainly tend to do more
frequently and better than required by
strictly practical considerations, then it is
likely that the digging out of floors in
Viking age halls was so too. This is espe-
cially likely if it was a regular task, e.g.
performed annually as a part of spring
cleaning. It might also have been done
less frequently but then probably in rela-
tion to other maintenance of the building.
Little is known about how prevalent turf
architecture was in the regions which the
people colonising Iceland came from, but
even if they were all used to living in turf
buildings (which is unlikely) it is
inevitable that such buildings will have
turned out to “behave” differently in
Iceland than in the regions of origin. Not
only was the building material, the turf in
its composition, different but the build-
ings will have responded differently to
the different climate in Iceland. This is
likely to have affected maintenance and
repair rates, increasing them, possibly by
an order of magnitude. If we imagine that
digging out the floors was conceived of
as a measure contributing to the longevi-
ty of a house, say, because it was expect-
ed to last for 200 years, then the realisa-
tion that in the new country houses only
lasted a fraction of that time, may also
have affected how people defined their
housework priorities.
Add to this that it is likely that the
people who moved to Iceland were as a
rule not used to living in turf-houses.
Then a floor maintenance habitus which
demanded that the floor be dug out peri-
odically will have been unfamiliar to
many (e.g. those raised on clay floors)
and less ingrained in others, not least
because the general house-holding and
building-maintenance paradigm will not
have been transferred intact. In other
words, digging out the floors may have
been a habitus in Viking age Iceland but
it may have been less immutable than
many others. In particular it is likely that
such a habitus may have lost some of its
force when other elements of the general
house-holding paradigm had to be adjust-
ed to new realities.
Changes in farmhouse layout
Although much remains to be understood
about architectural developments in
Viking age Iceland it is clear that once a
basic type of dwelling had become gener-
ally accepted in the new society (Orri
Vésteinsson et al. 2006, 116-18) it began
to develop its own characteristics, both in
terms of building technique and layout.
The most important change in the present
context is the development of multi-
celled structures, where separate rooms
were added on to the halls. These were in
effect separate buildings with their own
timber-frames, but they were connected
to the halls (and each other) with corri-
30