Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1943, Page 133

EXPEDITION TO ICELAND IN 1939
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partly because many of the first settlers undoubtedly hailed from
there, partly because the building material was the same: stone
and turf. The houses here are characteristic long-houses, often
of huge dimensions, to a length of 62.5 metres. Among the large
number of sites examined the majority belong to the periods
previous to the Viking Age, and the small number that can be
dated at the Viking Age and the early Middle Ages are nearly
all small and simple houses, which look like degenerated repe-
titions of the much richer and grander buildings of the preceding
centuries. One cannot help interpreting this development as due
to an impoverishment of the settlements, which cannot have been
without influence on the joining of the emigration to Iceland.
A fine example of the hall-building of these tracts in the period
about the introduction of Christianity is the small, only 21 metres
long site of Oma, the curved main walls of which encompass a
narrow room with a fireplace in middle of the floor and holes
from two rows of roof-supporting poles.
In Sweden the prehistoric sites are best known through the
comprehensive investigations on Gottland and öland. The settle-
ment here belongs to the period about 500. The houses are curved
long-houses just as the Norwegian farms, but the lay-outs look
richer by often consisting of several houses gathered round a
courtyard, perhaps because the islands offered more favourable
conditions to the farmers than the Norwegian west coast. Widely
known is the Lojsta Hall in Gottland. Sites which may with
certainty be dated at the Viking Age are rare in Sweden. Best
documented by fine finds of relics is the house near Levide
in Gottland. Unfortunately the plan is not known to its full ex-
tent, but from the description it seems to have been an oval house
of considerable length mud-built with support of poles and with
detached roof-poles.
The earliest account of a Norse hall is found in the Old
English epic of Beowulf from the 7th century. Here there is a
description of the Danish king’s magnificent, timber-built hall
Heorot ('hart’), the walls of which are held together with iron
fastenings, but obviously do not support the roof, which thus
must rest on poles. It is a festal hall, which the king leaves at
bedtime, while the drunken guard move the benches together
and make beds for the night on the boards, a situation which
also under more modest circumstances is well-known in much
later times. In the large Danish military camp of Trelleborg