Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2013, Page 16

AGUSTA EDWALD AND KAREN MILEK
shield new walls, which apart from giving
the appearance that the houses were
sinking, lead to various structural and
damp problems (Sveinsson 1790).
Rapoport (1979) defined vemacular
architecture as having an ‘additive quality’
in opposition to the closed, final form of
high-style design (i.e. modem
constmctions). Such distinctions obscure
the practices that go on in making all
buildings, whether designed or not, as
well as those activities that follow on from
the fleeting moment when a house is
considered to be completed. According to
Rapoport’s (1979) definition the Icelandic
turfhouse is quintessentially vemacular
and the eradication of ad hoc building
practices were, indeed, central to the
discourse of‘modemizers’ like Sveinsson.
It is not the distinction between modem
and vemacular that we are most concemed
with here but rather to demonstrate how
the entangled processes of building and
inhabiting, which we believe occur in all
buildings, can be illustrated through an
investigation of the biography of a
turfhouse.
Turfhouses do not appear to have been
built to a pre-designed plan but rather
refurbished and amended as needs arose.
This may be one of the reasons why
houses on the majority of Icelandic farms
appear to have been in the same place on
their property through centuries of
habitation (Vésteinsson 2004). Only
occasionally was an old house demolished
completely to make way for a new
building. Most often new rooms were
added to existing ones, older ones tom
down or refurbished, entrances blocked or
new ones created, in a continual
intermixed building-and-dwelling. A turf
house is built of relatively malleable,
impermanent constmction materials: turf
easily wears and is prone to degradation
when penetrated by water and ffost (Milek
2012), causing the walls to slump and
crack. However, the building material also
allows for refurbishment: corridors and
entrance ways can be blocked, walls
shored up, thickened or cut back with
relative ease. As new additions are built,
and older rooms are demolished or
refurbished, the complex relationship
between the building and its inhabitants is
clearly materialized, as the house grows
with a growing family and shrinks when
families get smaller or during periods of
hardship.
Six inspection records of the
farmhouse at Hombrekka are available at
the local archives in Sauðárkrókur lfom
the years 1868, 1881, 1896, 1917, 1918
and 1920. The records give an
overwhelming impression of the building
in near constant disrepair. The
descriptions are often very detailed (Table
2). They document the size of individual
rooms, the style and condition and of the
roof, walls and flooring, and the presence
and sizes of windows and doors.
However, they do not describe the layout
of the farmhouse. Each room is described
by itself and even though it is possible to
gain some indication of where the rooms
were situated in relation to one another
from the order in which they were
described, the exact layout of the
farmhouse cannot be determined. The
inspections, furthermore, do not list any
fumiture or decoration in the building
such as stoves, hearths, or lighting fixtures