Vikingatidens byggande i Mälardalen : ramverk och knuttimring

During the Viking Age, or about AD 750 to AD 1050, there were remarkable changes of buildingtechniques in the Mälaren region.After several thousands of years with long houses, framework houses appeared, the first evidence ofthis found in the town of Birka in the 8th century. In Birka, there is also evidence of framework withposts on padstones in the first half of the 10th century, which is the earliest clear evidence of such aconstruction north of the Alps. This building method became predominant in the first half of the 11thcentury in the town of Sigtuna and probably in great parts of the region as well.Corner timbered buildings with lying logs seem to have appeared in the region roughly about AD1000, with earliest evidence in Sigtuna about AD 1005. After a few decades, this technique had becomequite common in Sigtuna in addition to the framework technique. The treatment of the logs and thekind of log notches are very similar to those in Staraya Ladoga and Novgorod in Russia. The logs areround and the notches are, in principle, semi-circular, "round log notch" (Swe. "rundknut", Norw."vagelaft"). There is no evidence of bevelling in the log notches (Swe. "rännknut", Norw. "findalslaft").The introduction of corner timbering seems to have occurred roughly at the same time in several Scandinavian regions with influence above all from Russia