Good and Bad Lessons from the Vikings

Beneath the survival of a community, the decisions made, even good or bad,

are to last for eternity. When the Vikings settled in Iceland, for example, they

took a massive percentage of the trees in the countryside or the architectural

tradition of turf houses. The hard task of reforesting the Icelandic countryside

remains as a long-term objective, what the ancient people did kept a

continuous unsustainability to the last three or four generations

approximately, and by being a low-density country, the help should also

come from international organizations. As Dr. Alderson states in the article:

“Simply everything was stripped away” “This is what people don’t realize.

You can lose something like this in relatively few years.”

Icelanders from the Iron Age needed the woodlands for their daily life, using

slash and burn, grazing, building and fuel in three hundred years, then the

eruptions left volcanic material, very fragile soil of ashes, destroying all

vegetation and most of the animals, completing a process of forced

desertification. The erosion caused by the volcanic activity and its remains

affected the soil and made sandstorms, being unable to grow any flora or keep

fauna alive. Within the new process of reforestation, the focus on the economic

growth for farmers and producers and helping the environment by recovering

rich levels of vegetation in the soil, testing with some plants to get the

adequate type for the plot, and therefore stopping sandstorms, as well as

tackling issues as the high percentages of greenhouse gas emissions.

Turf houses in Iceland are one exemplary solution to what people needed at

the time, long term housing, between twenty to seventy years depending the
climate. The benefits start with the soil as the primary ingredient to the

shelters, easy to work with, endless source and cost-free, provides comfort for

buildings as a natural insulator, keeps the house warm in winter and cold in

summer. The shape and construction of the house gives a higher resistance to

weather conditions, as droughts and wind passing, merging also with the

mountainous landscapes. Because of the grass and the roots, turf is also a

better insulator than stone, one of the main materials in other constructions

such as farms, churches or warehouses of the villages.

The process of construction of these magnificent architectural example starts

with turf preparation, as pieces are cut in advance with a scythe, then put to

dry, necessary to the sustainability of the building. They didn’t use wet turf

because it would weaken the building, every piece shrinking when drying, or

rotting when heated. Then the bases of walls with three rows of stones, to

prevent soil moisture from seeping into turf and wood. After this, they laid up

the walls forming piles of blocks of turf to ensure the building stability as clay

bricks in the modern world, put with the wooden frame structure. Finishing

with the roof and façade where turf strips are positioned so that they overlap

each other and dryland grass taking over covering the entirety of the roof.

In conclusion, there should always be a respect to the natural and cultural

heritage, sometimes colliding for a better future of the communities in this

cases. After collecting the information and acknowledging the issues, the

people of today reached to a solution that could be beneficial to the

environment as well as connecting their history to the context.