Museums dedicated to the traditions associated with an extreme environment are common in the Far North, where also museums focused on modern art and history are numerous. In Iceland, some of these cultural institutions refer to the settlement’s development in an hostile natural environment, the ‘Glaumbær‘ (‘Skagafjordur Heritage Museum’ of Varmahlíð, in the north of the island) is among the exhibition spaces inserted in farm houses dating back to the nineteenth or early twentieth century.
Originally, the ‘Icelandic turf houses‘ were human settlements in an extreme environment, because the structure built into the soil, although a system that today may sound primitive, actually allows a greater level of insulation from the weather and outside temperatures, with respect to any other type of building.
Similar techniques had existed in Scandinavia, the area from which the Norse settlers headed to Iceland, bringing there also an Irish element, as a result of Viking conquests in the north of Europe (in particular from the ninth century AD, when Norse colonized part of Ireland and after the battles brought with them in their subsequent settlement in Iceland a large number of Celt prisoners). They developed the system of building in the ground, as Iceland offered less timber and other building materials than the areas of origin.
The outline of the house built in the ground was (and still is in many cases, not only out of sake of historical reconstruction but also because of a research for solutions able to save energy in an island where even nowadays the environment represents a daily challenge that creativity and technique are called to face) consists of a base made up of large stones and a wooden structure covered by turf, arranged in different layers along with the wood, so to thermally insulate the upper part of the house, that is more exposed to external agents.
These homes have been a constant feature of the Icelandic landscape for centuries, but in the Middle Ages other techniques have found their way even in the far north, and finally two centuries ago the country finally came to the building styles that were prevalent in the rest of the West. However, old and new turf houses continued to exist, even after the introduction in the island, in a more consistent way, of construction materials with greater insulation capacity than the birch, which was historically common in the island. A typical aspect of the houses built into the ground is the grass that grows above, increasing the sense of harmony with the landscape and the environment constantly associated with this type of settlements.
In the exhibition spaces like the one mentioned at the beginning a large number of working tools of the time and objects used in everyday life are on display. Specific effects of climate changes that occurred emerged strongly in 2014 and 2015 and the attention to the habits of energy consumption is the result: techniques such as those measured in old and new turf homes are no longer just an interesting reminder of the solutions developed under the pressure of necessity in an extreme environment, but also appropriate case studies in order to assess all the architectural alternatives that are able to ensure energy efficiency in the different natural environments where human settlement take place.
@AldoCiummo
