Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2010, Page 33

ON FARM MOUNDS
12. An llth-12th century hall in Sveigakot with an annex at the back which was used both for
cooking and food storage.
dors and had adjoining turf walls and
roofs. To begin with these were predomi-
nantly much smaller rooms intended for
specific purposes, typically cooking,
food preparation and food storage.
Examples of such add-ons from the 10th-
llth centuries come from Granastaðir,
Grelutóttir, Hvítárholt (VIII and IX),
Skallakot and Sveigakot (Fig. 12). In
later structures these additional rooms
tend to increase in size and number and
new functions also get represented,
notably latrines and, most importantly,
the stofa, a dwelling and reception room
smaller than the hall, but usually larger
than the other rooms. These develop-
ments are clearly seen in 1 lth-13th centu-
ry farmhouses at sites like Aslákstunga
innri, Gjáskógar, Sámsstaðir,
Snjáleifartóftir, Stóraborg, Stöng and
Þórarinsstaðir (Fig. 13). Setting aside for
a moment the reasons for these changes
they had very important repercussions for
the development of fann-mounds.
Firstly this spread the workload of
repairs and rebuilding more evenly. In
particular major repair works and
rebuilding could in these structures be
achieved piecemeal. As each room was
structurally a separate building its timber
frame, turf walls and roof could be
repaired and rebuilt separately. This
means that instead of having to dismantle
the whole structure when the timber
frame needed replacing or major repairs,
each cell could be dealt with separately.
Thus the whole rhythm of building main-
tenance was íundamentally altered, with
smaller but more frequent rebuilds
instead of more infrequent but radical
repairs. It is likely that this change in
rhythm affected the whole house-holding
and building maintenance paradigm,
including the floor maintenance habitus.
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