Icelandic Turf House Architecture

Icelandic turf houses, torfbaeir in Icelandic, are timber-framed structures with turf walls and a turf roof covering, built in Iceland since the island's settlement in the ninth century. The style grew out of practical necessity: turf construction gave better insulation than buildings made only of wood or stone, at a time when other building materials were hard to obtain in quantity. Iceland was roughly thirty percent forested at settlement, mostly with birch, so builders framed their houses in native birch rather than the oak preferred for Norse halls in Scandinavia, while turf, already used for roofing on some Norwegian buildings, was locally abundant and familiar. Turf houses were raised on large stone foundations supporting a wooden frame, with turf fitted around it in blocks, sometimes in a second layer or a herringbone pattern, decorative wooden doorways leading into central halls built around a hearth, and floors of wood, stone or earth depending on a building's purpose. The burstabaer style, marked by wooden gable ends called gaflar, emerged in the late eighteenth century and became the most recognizable turf house form, surviving into the twentieth century before corrugated iron and reinforced concrete construction replaced it.