Stuggu

Stuggu at Stiklastadir is built according to models from the early Middle Ages, that is, from the 1000th to the 1100th century. Novene (laftet) is often called a findalslaft, and is carved as we see it was done in the early 1000th century in Trondheim. Precisely in Trondheim, the archaeologists have excavated the remains of the oldest slatted residential houses that we find in Norwegian territory. Several researchers believe this is a building practice that came here during the Viking Age. People from Scandinavia encountered laftinga as a building custom through the extensive contacts they had with areas in what are today Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, and which the Vikings called Gardarike. Lafting was widespread here and you could see that this was a building practice that provides tight, sheltered houses. They are easier to build, and with less labour, than halls and longhouses. Such buildings could also fit in forest settlements such as Trøndelag.

The two-room layout is the most common in residential houses throughout the Middle Ages. You enter a small room, the hallway, before you enter the living room itself, the living room. Sometimes the hallway is divided into two rooms, as we have done here. Then you have a small room in addition that can be used as storage, for animals, as a bedroom or whatever you need for different parts of the year. Since it is a fairly tall building we have carpentry, we have also laid a floor over the hallway. This way we can use the height here for a nice little warehouse and bedroom.

The height of the buildings is usually not possible to see from archaeological excavations. Some of the living rooms we have preserved from a little later, into the 1200th century, show that they could have quite a significant ceiling height. We have therefore chosen to build the cabin fairly high, but still lower than some we have sources for. Perhaps they were built high to show status? High under the roof is also good for getting the smoke from the fireplace up and out. And it gives the opportunity to use the height for an extra room, which we have done, and for drying and storing materials and equipment.

Stuggu is timbered in pine, like most buildings we have preserved from the Middle Ages. But archeology shows us that log houses in Trondheim from the 1000th century and later were just as likely to be built of spruce. Perhaps we see here a difference in status, access to resources and priorities? Was spruce considered second-rate and cheaper timber? Those who built houses in Trondheim 1000 years ago were not rich people and farmers, and certainly did not have access to the best forest land. The best pine timber was to go to the king's carpenters, to the church builders, to the boat builders who built merchant fleets and warships, and to the living rooms of the big farmers. Ordinary people, poor people and tenants had to take what they were given, perhaps poor spruce forest along fields, meadows and rivers, fast-growing and twiggy.