In this video we’re excited to share the re-created 1000-year-old Viking settlement at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, Canada. We visited the site last fall and had we really enjoyed learning more about the settlement, but also about the traditional construction techniques they used for the turf dwellings and workshops.
The turf houses are built with timber frames that are load bearing, and walls that are built with peat bricks that have been cut and dried from a nearby bog. Each wall actually has two layers of the bricks, with layer of gravel sandwiched in the middle to help drain any moisture before it infiltrates to the interior of the structure.
This goes to show how there are low cost, sustainable building materials almost everywhere in the world. One of my favorite sod houses is this one in Canada:
https://naturalbuildingblog.siterubix.com/21st-century-sod-house/