Vernacular architecture in Norway covers about 4,000 years of archeological, literary, and preserved structures. Within the history of

Norwegian architecture The architecture of Norway has evolved in response to changing economic conditions, technological advances, demographic fluctuations and cultural shifts. While outside architectural influences are apparent in much of Norwegian architecture, they ...

, vernacular traditions form a distinct and pervasive influence that persists to this day.

Early origins

Archeological Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscape ...

evidence in

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

indicates that

Nordic Bronze Age The Nordic Bronze Age (also Northern Bronze Age, or Scandinavian Bronze Age) is a period of Scandinavian prehistory from c. 2000/1750–500 BC. The Nordic Bronze Age culture emerged about 1750 BC as a continuation of the Battle Axe culture (the ...

and

Iron Age The Iron Age is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humanity. It was preceded by the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic) and the Bronze Age (Chalcolithic). The concept has been mostly appl ...

settlements were commonly large, communal, and multipurpose buildings. These buildings were not particularly durable; they were supported by posts in the ground that rotted in the course of a few decades. Roofs were thatched or covered with birch bark and turf, and walls were built of turf, palisades or

Wattle and daub Wattle and daub is a composite building method used for making walls and buildings, in which a woven lattice of wooden strips called wattle is daubed with a sticky material usually made of some combination of wet soil, clay, sand, animal dung a ...

. Over time, the buildings became more elaborate, notably with internal pillars and increasingly sophisticated structural practices. Large farms took the form of small communities, with several buildings, including a hall of assembly. These houses eventually could be as much as 90 meters long and 7 meters wide. These had central open hearths with vents in the roof above.

Stave, palisade, and log building

The method of wood stave construction evolved over several hundred years in Norway, reaching their apex with the

stave church A stave church is a medieval wooden Christian church building once common in north-western Europe. The name derives from the building's structure of post and lintel construction, a type of timber framing where the load-bearing ore-pine posts a ...

es in the 13th century in Norway and into the 14th century in Iceland. Stave construction lent itself well to building the earlier large, multipurpose houses.

External links

The Norwegian Folk Museum in Oslo
Architecture in Norway

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