A variety of long house with bowed sides, known from Scandinavia and Scandinavian colonies in other parts of Europe throughout the Viking period. The finest examples have been excavated at 1 Ith-century Viking camps such as Trelleborg in southern Jutland. A typical example has been reconstructed at Trelleborg with walls made of halved tree-trunks set in rows, with the curved face outwards as in stave churches. In this case there seems to have been a series of angled posts around the outside acting rather like buttresses and giving additional support to the gabled roof with its curved ridge. The roof may have been covered in wooden shingles, thatch or turf. Archaeological investigations of the Viking Age royal sites in Denmark as well as other settlements have revealed considerable variations in boat-shaped houses according to function and locality. There are examples built in dry stone with internal aisles, or dry-stone and turf, or half-timbered types, but most of them do not have provision for an animal byre, which is the essence of the true European long house. A few examples have been discovered in English contexts, notably one possible boat-shaped building from Hamwih and another from Bucken, Huntingdonshire.
The Macmillan dictionary of archaeology, Ruth D. Whitehouse, 1983Copied