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Turf houses became the rural Icelandic vernacular for over a thousand years after the techniques of building with soil, wood and uncut stone were introduced by the Vikings in AD 870. These earthy dwellings represent an architecture of necessity providing excellent insulation against the hostile climate and a structural solution to the lack of wood and other construction materials available on the island.
As cute and cosy as they might appear, the torfbæir were damp, dark, rodent-ridden and required rebuilding every 20 to 30 years on account of their organic structure (which also explains why so few remain today). Life was tough for ordinary people in Iceland, especially those who did not own land, and many lived under a serf system called the vistarband right up until the end of the nineteenth century.
Turf houses represent a truly indigenous typology to the island and their influence on contemporary Icelandic architecture is still strong – as seen in current tendencies for environmentally-friendly buildings to dig into or incorporate the surrounding landscape, using forms and features that often hark directly back to these humble mounds. p (gk)
The Keldur turf house in Rangárvellir is thought to be the oldest example of a farmhouse built in this manner in Iceland. There is evidence of a building on this site since the twelfth century, although the earliest parts of the current wooden interior hail from the early 1800s. (Photos: Guðmundur Ingólfsson)
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Turf houses became the rural Icelandic vernacular for over a thousand years after the techniques of building with soil, wood and uncut stone were introduced by the Vikings in AD 870. These earthy dwellings represent an architecture of necessity providing excellent insulation against the hostile climate and a structural solution to the lack of wood and other construction materials available on the island...
Image: Engraving of a fisherman’s house near Reykjavík by French explorer Paul Gaimard, 1835.
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