2. Poor Houses Upright wooden posts(staves), with thatched roofs and walls were made of big boulders. Windows were just small openings in the walls. A much used house type was the pit house, which was dug about a meter or 3.5 feet into the ground, using the surrounding dirt as lower part of the wall. By digging the house into the ground you take advantage of its insulating properties and to some degree the heat coming from the ground. Pit houses were used by the poor because of their low building cost as the most used building materials were readily available in the immediate building area.
3. What were the rich houses made of? The rich houses were made out of large timber beams, wattle, daub. They were usually just one room where they cooked slept. Animals and people lived in the same building
4. Town houses The town houses were small with up to 3 rooms. They were built of wooden planks others were made of wattle and daub. Most houses had thatched roofs
5. What did the houses look like? The poor houses were round with straw roofs. The rich houses were square or rectangular and were made out of wood with grass/straw roofs.
6. Why did people live in different types of houses? Different people lived in different houses because the amount of different resources around them.
7. What did it look like inside a Viking house? The inside of the houses is also different. The space available is much smaller, and the houses were built high enough to accommodate a low sleeping area above the ground floor. The house would generally also come with a hole in the middle of the roof to let out smoke and to provide ventilation. Many Vikings built benches around the inner walls of their houses which would be covered in skins or furs and which were used as seats and/or as beds. Although only built with one room many Viking houses would be home to a number of people and would also provide shelter for their animals who would have a special livestock area at one end of the house.
8. Heating and lighting Windows were very rare and light would generally come from candles or lamps which burnt animal fat and a fire. Windows may also have been shuttered. The fire was the 'central heating' and 'cooker', although a few houses may also have had a clay bread oven.
9. Doors and floors Doors had iron or wood hinges and were closed with a latch. Some doors would also have a lock. The floors would have been of packed earth or wood. The wooden floors may have been just simple floorboards or may have been made of tessellated wooden tiles.
10. Furniture Furniture was generally very sparse. There would be a chest, or chests, for important belongings, often iron bound and lockable. There would also be some shelves, a loom and perhaps a table and some stools. During a meal the table would have been covered with a table-cloth.
11. In the Viking homelands there were plenty of trees, so the walls of the houses were built of wood and the roofs were thatched with straw or reeds. Where there were not many trees, however, the walls were built from slabs of turf on a stone base with roofs made from thatch or turf. Another method of house-building was wattle and daub. Upright posts were woven together with twigs and then daubed with thick mud to keep out the draughts.
12. Villages Villages would also have had different buildings that the inhabitants could use. Most, for example, would have had a bath house and, after the adoption of Christianity, many Viking villages would also have a churches. Only a few Vikings lived in towns. Most of them lived in the country in Longhouses.
13. Facts Beds were only used in the wealthier houses. Wooden chests were used to store furs blankets and other household goods. Saturday was bath day for the Vikings. Viking farms had a bath house or Sauna near the farm for the weekly bath
14. Bibliography Books: Step into the Viking World Written by Philip Steele I was There Vikings Websites: www.regia.org/houses.htm www.bbc.co.uk/schools/vikings/life/index.shtml
