The forge and the drying house

Comes from: Heggstad, a neighboring farm to Stiklestad.
Age: Uncertain - 1800th century.
To the museum: 1975

The building is barely 10 m long and approx. 5,5 m wide. It is built of lath timber on one floor on a gray stone wall. The roof is covered with slate (labsolstein) from Spjellberget in Sul. Originally it was probably a spontaneous roof. There are two rooms, a forge with breeding (esse), and forge bellows. The bellows is from Strådalen in Vera and was made in 1841. The other room has an oven and drying rack. The building itself is set up as it stood at Heggstad.

The combination of forge and drying house was typical for many of the flat settlements on Innherred where grain cultivation was important. It was practical because both houses needed heat and both were therefore also flammable. The blacksmith had to heat iron to shape it, and the drying houses were used to dry grain and malt. Such houses therefore had to stand some distance away from the other houses on the farms, because they often burned, and people wanted to prevent the fire from spreading.

Archaeologist Per Steinar Brevik and museum mediator Øystein Viem talk about iron production and the important function of the forge on the farm.