Glaumbær í Skagafirði

The old turf farm and museum at Glaumbær in N-Iceland. Turf housing was the universal vernacular type of architecture in Iceland for most of its history, resulting from the fact that the country has little wood and usable building stone, but in most places plenty of turf and peat. When abandoned, the houses would almost naturally melt into the countryside. This lack of durability, and the fact that turf houses became a symbol of poverty and backwardness for Icelanders in the 20th Century, has resulted in a limited number of well preserved turf houses today. Glaumbær in Skagafjörður is one of those left, turned into a museum when the last inhabitant left in 1947. A farm has been at Glaumbær since settlement around 900 AD, but the present buildings date from the 18th and 19th Centuries. It was a well-to-do farm, so poor Icelanders would have lived in even smaller and more primitive buildings than this. The old Icelandic farm was a complex of small separate buildings, which were connected by a narrow passageway. The relatively drier weather in the North means that more turf buildings are preserved there than in the South. A turf building, in districts of moderate rainfall, can last up to a century (and longer, if it is carefully kept). The roof must be sloped at the correct angle; if it is too flat, water leaks through and if it is too steep, the turf cracks during spells of dry weather or drains too quickly so the grass does not grow, both resulting in a roof that leaks.