Those crazy Vikings. When they weren’t out conquering, pillaging, and committing general bad-assery, they were hanging out in their warm hobbit-like homes in Iceland. While the boat-looking longhouses we all think of when picturing a Viking building were the main dwellings back in Scandinavia, almost all homes in Iceland were made literally from the land.

These turf houses were built both out of necessity for warmth and lack of proper materials. Wood from birch trees – the most common tree in Iceland – is too weak to hold up an entire home, so it was used as a frame onto which the turf was then packed. Eirik the Red and his compatriots mastered the art of building homes from the materials at hand. But this wasn’t just about digging up clumps of dirt and throwing them onto your frame. A good turf home builder knew that you not only had to dig down a few inches to find the good stuff but you had to be near a bog where the ground is riddled with roots from a certain bean plant.

Many details factored in to how long your house would stay up. Depending on the weather, time of year, and amount of water and roots in the soil, they could stay standing for anywhere from 3 years to 3 decades. While only foundations from Viking Era homes survive, turf homes were a common practice for over a millennium.

The majority of homes in Iceland were made from turf until the 1940s, when concrete was introduced. Today, recreations can be found all over Iceland and at the Norse Settlement in North America at L’Anse aux Meadows.

Photos and information courtesy of: Wikipedia, Hurstwic, and my current read The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman by Nancy Marie Brown.

As always, if YOU have an idea for a Historical Thursday, let me know at: thereifixedit@gmail.com