The Plan of St. Gall a study of the architecture & economy of & life in a paradigmatic Carolingian monastery |
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LÖJSTA, GOTLAND, SWEDEN |
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| VI. |
| VI. 1. |
| VI.I.I. |
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| VI. 2. |
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| VI. 3. |
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 | The Plan of St. Gall |  |
LÖJSTA, GOTLAND, SWEDEN
The second house, a structure of more normal proportions,
85 feet by 33½ feet (26 m. × 10.5 m.), was excavated in
the summer of 1929 in the vicinity of castle Lojsta in
Gotland (fig. 291A-C).[104]
It was the same construction type
except that here the roof-supporting posts were not sunk
298.B EZINGE (GRONINGEN), THE NETHERLANDS. CATTLE BARN OF Warf-LAYER IV, 2nd CENTURY B.C.
[author's reconstruction, drawn by Walter Schwarz]
298.A PLAN
REDRAWN FROM VAN GIFFEN
1:150
299. EZINGE (GRONINGEN), THE NETHERLANDS. CATTLE BARN OF Warf-LAYER IV, 2nd CENTURY B.C.
[excavation photo by courtesy of A. E. Van Giffen]
This building, like those unearthed above and beneath it, owes its magnificent state of preservation to the fact that each settlement stratum in
which houses were buried in the course of successive inundations was sealed by sterile layers of sand and clay deposited after flooding, sealing
their content against the infiltration of air and thus protecting it from decay. The roof-supporting posts of oak, the braided walls and cross
partitions (wattled saplings of birch) were preserved to a height of 4 feet. The manure mats were found to be in such good condition that they
could be walked upon without breaking. The building was 29 feet wide (7.20m) and over 75 feet long (23m) but was never excavated to its full
length. Its construction was identical with that of the houses found in the earlier Warf layers (figs. 293-297).
The systematic division of the aisles into stalls, together with the absence of any fireplaces, suggests that it was used for the stabling of livestock
exclusively. Since every stall had room for two head of cattle, this barn must have been able to hold at least 48 animals, striking evidence of
the economic wealth of these early shoreland farmers. Livestock entered and left the building through doors in the two narrow ends—a feature
found in many other early Iron Age houses (figs. 304, 310, 312, 315, 316), and today in the Lower Saxon Wohnstallhaus and the Frisian
Los-hus, modern descendants of this building type.
PRE- & PROTOHISTORIC CARPENTRY JOINTS
300.A
300.B
300.C
300.D
[after Zippelius, 1954, figs. 1, 2, & 5]
A. Forked posts (Neolithic)
B. Post with slit head
C. Mortice and tenon joint in post and plate assemblage
(Neolithic)
D. Mortice and tenon joint in post and ground sill assemblage
(Bronze Age)
stones were still in their original position (fig. 291A). The
posts themselves had disappeared. Rising freely from stones
as they did, they could only retain their vertical position by
being framed together at the top by means of cross beams
and long beams. Slight irregularities in the longitudinal
alignment of the posts suggested that the cross beams lay
underneath the long beams. The excavators felt so sure of
their interpretation of these conditions that they undertook
to reconstruct the entire hall on its original site (figs. 291B
and C). Some of the details of this reconstruction have since
been questioned, but the doubts amount basically to no
more than that in the original house the walls were probably
a little higher than they are shown at present.[105] The
pottery found in the house suggests as period of construction
the third century A.D. In the fifth century, for unknown
reasons, the hall appears to have been abandoned.
In the two decades that followed probably more than
sixty houses of the Lojsta type were unearthed on the
islands of Gotland and Öland, on the mainland of Sweden,
in Norway and in Denmark,[106]
and, last but not least, in
Iceland, the country whose literary tradition introduced us
to this type of dwelling.
The Swedish material is surveyed in exemplary publications, such
as the work of Nihlen and Böethius on the Iron Age farmsteads of Gotland,
and the corresponding volume by Stenberger on the Iron Age
farmsteads of Öland (both published in 1933), and the magnificent
collective work on Vallhagar, edited in two volumes by Stenberger and
Klindt-Jensen, 1955.
The Norwegian material excavated prior to 1942 is summarized in
Grieg, 1942.
For the Danish material prior to 1937 see Hatt, 1937. For later material
see Nørlund's splendid account on Trelleborg, published in 1948,
and the excavation reports by Hatt and others listed in Hatt's latest
great work, on the Iron Age village of Nørre Fjand, published in 1957,
as well as a number of articles that have appeared during the last two
decades in the Danish series Fra Nationalmuseets Arbejdsmark (Copenhagen,
Nationalmuseet, 1928ff).
| The Plan of St. Gall | |