TIME OF INVENTION OR ADOPTION
IS PROBLEMATIC
Moritz Heyne[247]
and Joseph Schepers[248]
ascribe its invention
to the Romans, but this supposition has recently
been shattered by André Parrot's extraordinary discovery
of two fireplaces from the bathrooms of the Palace of Mari
in Mesopotamia, which date from the beginning of the
second millennium B.C. (fig. 372).[249]
The smoke flues of these fireplaces consist of conical
hoods encasing a vertical stack of tubular flue tiles, with an
opening at the bottom for the fire which burned on a platform
that formed a quarter of a circle. Hence the Romans
cannot claim to be the first inventors of this device. They
may have rediscovered it, but until a chimney-type Roman
corner fireplace has actually been excavated—and so far no
one has had the good fortune to find one—even this assumption
must remain hypothetical. Conversely, it must be
stressed that wall or corner fireplaces with chimneys were
not a feature characteristic of Germanic house construction,
and were not known at all in the northernmost areas
held by Germanic peoples. We know this is so not only
because of hundreds of house sites that have actually been
excavated, but also because, when chimneys were finally
introduced at the Norwegian court during the reign of Olaf
Kyrre (1067-93), this was an event so unusual that it was
considered worthy of being recorded in Snorri's Lives of the
Kings of Norway: "It was an old custom in Norway that
the King's high seat was in the middle of the long bench.
The ale was borne round the fire. King Olaf was the first
to install corner fireplaces."[250]
(Ofnstofur, the Old Norse
term, like the Latin caminus retains etymological consciousness
of the fact that the masonry fireplace is an offspring of
the oven !) Iceland resisted this innovation even longer. The
first masonry-built Icelandic wall fireplace was constructed
in 1316, in the timbered hall of Bishop Laurentius at
Hólar.[251]