Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2010, Page 34

ORRI VÉSTEINSSON
13. Plan of Gjáskógar. This layout is typical of 1 lth-13th century farms in the South. with a
stofa added at the end of the hall in addition to annexes at the back.
What this means however is that a com-
plete rebuilding of the whole building
will never have been needed (barring
accidents such as fires or avalanches, or
extreme disrepair of the whole structure).
Each cell could be rebuilt separately
while other parts of the building were left
standing. After the stofa became com-
monplace people would never have to
move out of their farmhouse on account
of repairs, even when the hall needed to
be rebuilt. This is one weighty practical
reason for why people continued to live
on the same site, and is one of the pre-
conditions for the build-up of farm-
mounds: when farmhouses could be kept
in good repair by replacing one cell at a
time there never arose a reason to aban-
don the whole structure and build in a
newplace (Urbanczyk 1992, 116-29).
One effect of having farmhouses with
multiple cells with specialised functions
is that the build-up of floors will have
been different from one room to the next.
There were rooms which had greater traf-
fic than others, greater throughput of
materials and some which had fires going
and others which did not. In particular
specialised storage rooms are likely to
have seen less traffic and less build-up of
fuel residues than other rooms. This
means that floors will have increased in
thickness at different rates. Some floors
will then have had to be dug out more fre-
quently than others or significant differ-
ences in floor levels could develop within
the building. This may not have created
any serious problems for the inhabitants
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