Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2011, Qupperneq 36

TRBOJEVIÉ N., MOONEY D. E. AND BELL A. J.
nana), which were also heavily
represented in the Viking Age vegetation
of Iceland, the focus here was on the use of
the larger tree-birch as fuel so as to
approach an answer to the question of how
much of the woodlands might have been
felled due to the daily needs of the Viking
Age population for firewood. It is
reasonable to assume that tree-birch would
have been preferred over the wood of
shrubs as fuel, as long as it was available.
One of the key questions related to the
amount of wood used in the experiment
appeared before it actually started. This
was the storage problem - how and where
was firewood stored? If 100 kg of wood, as
used for this experiment which lasted for
almost two days, took approximately 0.5
m3, it is clear that storing wood for an
entire season must have been a matter of
careíul spatial organisation.
Five mercury centigrade (Celsius)
thermometers were set up for the
experiment (figure 2). They were
positioned at the height of 2 m, both
outside the building (1), following the
shade position during the day (4 positions),
as well as inside: in the main room (2) and
in two smaller rooms (2). The aim was that
the results could be expressed as a range of
temperature values reflecting living
conditions in houses of this type.
Results
The 100 kg of wood fuelled 43 hours and
40 minutes of continuous buming and
maintained temperatures suitable for living
and cooking by 3 people in an area of 45
m2 and a volume of 133 m3. The buming
produced insignificant amounts of ash, due
to good preparation of the firewood, which
was dried and ready for use.
On the one hand, the period of 43h 40’
could be regarded as short compared to
similar week-long experiments done in
other countries (e.g. Lejre, Denmark:
Skov et al 2000). However, it was more
than sufficient to yield useful results, since
the temperature established soon after the
start of the experiment was not
significantly affected throughout the
entire experiment despite variations of
16°C in the outside temperature. In other
words, even with such a large variation in
the outside temperature, the interior
temperature remained stable even without
any significantly larger consumption of
firewood, which testifies to the good
insulative properties of houses like this.
The temperature was relatively stable for
more than 40 hours and this was easily
maintained with an almost steady rate of
firewood consumption despite the outside
temperature. For this reason it was
decided that it was not necessary to
prolong the experiment.
The small number of people involved
in the experiment (three persons) could be
regarded as a weakness, but only during
the night time, since during the day the
occasional entry of tourists into the house
can be seen as a reasonably realistic
simulation of the presence of people in the
house for short periods at a time. It is
probable that the inhabitants of these
houses spent significant parts of their time
outdoors during the summer season.
The temperature reached an
acceptable level (which was maintained
throughout the experiment) very quickly
(in less than an hour) at the beginning,
with a similarly rapid retum to the
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