The Viking Age Farm

When looking at the Viking Age farmstead and the layout of the settlement and construction of the individual houses, we come across interesting regional differences. The main house was set in a square plot of land in the center of the plot, organised around a central hearth, used both for cooking, providing warmth and light, around which were raised areas along the sides of the house on which you would sleep, eat, perform crafts or entertain visitors. (Roesdahl: 41-45). The living area would occupy the center of the house and towards the front of the house would be an area prepared as a workshop, or storage for cooking utensils and food. Towards the back of the house would be the byre of the farm (Roesdahl: 99-104). This style of building changed during the Viking Age and another structure took its place which was similar in style, but which did not contain the byre on one side (Hall: 41)

During the Viking Age, more buildings started to appear on the farms, with each building housing a specific activity (Hall: 42). There was several ancillary buildings, like hay storage, living quarters for servants and slaves, workshops and food storage or the occassional smithy. Each building had its own unique function, though the function of each building differed between the regions. In Jutland, we see buildings dug halfway into the ground with a very simple construction being used for different crafts, like weaving. The same buildings could elsewhere be used used for living quarters or storage (Roesdahl 99-104, Hall: 41).

Most of the buildings of this time did not seem to have last very long, and while there are some houses supported by stone foundations, most of them are built directly on the ground. By studying tree-rings of timber from houses around Hedeby we know that repairs happened seldom and that old buildings were simply destroyed and rebuilt as needed (Graham-Campbell: 94). The average life span of a building was roughly 30 years, but it seems that towards the end of the Viking Age, the buildings did improve somewhat and we see for instance inner plank walls separated from the turf walls, which undoubtedly would have made the plank walls survive longer. One could also say that given the life expectancy of the people in general, rebuilding a house once during your life time was probably not a significant effort.

In Iceland, preciously few farms have been excavated from before year 1000, but the archaeological evidence from excavations of the Icelandic farm at Stöng suggest that buildings here too featured a central hearth, but it also contained a second hearth, as well sa two hearths in a separate kitchen area. The primary constructions materials were turf and sod. (Hall: 154). This is different from other areas, where cooking was done also on the central hearth in the building and not in separate areas. The construction materials are also different, emphasising turf instead of wood, probably because of a scarcity of wood in the area. Of particular interest is that the farm at Stöng had a separate diary and probably lavatory, connected to the same building complex as the living room and main hall (Graham-Campbell: 80-81).

The settlers of Iceland arrived primarily from Shetland, or through northern Norway to Faeroes (Graham-Campbell: 67), but building on Shetland does not contain the same clear room layout as the buildings in Iceland, but instead contain separate houses with one room each (Graham-Campbell: 70). This suggests that the style of a larger house with separate rooms originated in Iceland, potentially due to a harsher climate that made it beneficial to be able to stay more time inside of the same building.

References

• Hall, Richard. 2007. The World of the Vikings. New York: Thames & Hudson Inc.
• Roesdahl, Else. 1998. The Vikings. London: Penguin Books Ltd.
• Graham-Campbell, James. 2001. The Viking World. London: Frances Lincoln