SC - Iceland

[Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir]

Olwen wrote:

>
>So am I to understand they no longer build turf homes?  Somewhere in the
>website it said that.

I don't think anyone has built a turf house to live in for the last 50 years
and I can't remember offhand if anyone still lives in a turf house
somewhere. But houses and structures are still being made of turf -
actually, the guy who made the website - he calls himself a "turf artist" -
has done a lot to raise interest in turf constructions and old building
techniques. You can see some of his work here:

http://sunwagon.com/turf/husamappa/husin.html

There are photos of houses and structures he has erected according to his
own ideas, and of restoration work on older buildings. Of special interest
is no. 9, restoration work on Stöng in Þjórsárdalur - the buildings there
are actually a reconstruction based on an excavation of a farm that was
buried in volcanic ash when Mt. Hekla erupted in 1104.

>The stave church was wonderful.  What would be the
>purpose of that type of archetectural design?  Flight of fancy?  It looked
>to be made from fairly uniform lengths of wood and vaugly brought to mind
>the temples of Japan in form.


I don't know much about stave churches, actually. Presumably some of the
early Icelandic churches were stave churces but none survived - lack of
wood, after all, made these churches extremely costly to build. There is a
nice site about Norwegian stave churches, with lots of photos, here:

http://w1.2777.telia.com/~u222200871/echurch.htm

and another, describing techniques, building styles, history etc., is here:

http://home.ringnett.no/bjornstad/stavechurch/frameset.html

Nanna