Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1943, Blaðsíða 132

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LE NORD
of providing timber for building in the nearly woodless country;
for the great oceanic currents carried large quantities of drift-
wood to the island both from America and from Siberia, a source
of wealth the importance of which sufficiently clearly appears
from the large number of medieval legal provisions for its utili-
zation. But this timber was saved for the necessary roof-con-
struction and for the monumental building of temples and
churches.
The Icelandic settlers no doubt had quite a definite view
as to which demands should be made to a house and its arrange-
ment. In this respect they did not start afresh when going ashore
in Iceland, but just as they carried with them all the material
and spiritual culture of the home country, thus the dwelling in
the old country was their model when the first Icelandic farms
were built. Therefore we are not unjustified in assuming that
the farms of the period of the first settling truly reflect the
housing culture of the home country. Only in the course of time
did the Icelanders learn to master the special demands which
the local building material, climate, and other factors made on
technical skill and arrangement, and only then there was a pos-
sibility of a development independent of the mother-country.
Therefore there is nothing surprising in the fact that the
Icelandic type of hall is known from practically the whole of
the Scandinavian area of the Yiking Age. Of course the type
of the building material will be of outstanding importance and
in a great many cases a decisive factor for the formation of the
types of houses. The tall, comparatively slender trunks of the
districts of softwood forests are most applicable as block-timber
in log constructions, and their limited length conditions com-
paratively small and many houses on the individual farm. The
knotty trunks of the hardwood tree, particularly the oak, on
the other hand, may be profitably split up in broad boards,
which may either be erected in vertical stake construction or as
framework with horizontal boards, allow of walls of infinite
length and therefore draw no line as regards the extension of the
house. However, also from woodless tracts of the Scandinavian
countries we know of houses built of stone and turf, thus the same
material as that available in Iceland.
In Norway the majority of known prehistoric sites are found
at the coast of the south-west country, woodless tracts, which
is of great interest to the problem of Icelandic house-building,