Building with sods

The University of Groningen Institute for Archaeology and the Yeb Hettinga Museum are building a reconstruction of an ancient Frisian sod house. The building is a combination of farmhouse and barn resembling those constructed around 700 AD in the region where the population lived on mounds known as ‘terpen’. The reconstruction is based on recent archaeological research into sod houses in the provinces of Friesland and Groningen. What makes the experiment special is that the sod walls, which are nearly a metre thick, are the main roof support. Archaeologists had long thought that this was impossible.

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