House of Questions

Not much survived because original floors have been destroyed by erosion. Hearths are preserved more commonly (from the Aeneolithic on they were carefully built from daub, stone, isolation layers of bark and so on) or arched ovens...

Anthropological and demographic studies give us an idea of the physical characteristics of the ancient Latgallians in the Early Middle Ages. Latgallian men living in the 7th–13th century had an average stature of...

It is a protection for the roof, to keep sparks from getting up in to it. Right now we have a piece of wool cloth, in our last house we had animal skin. As soon as we can we are building a frame of willow which we are going to coat with clay.

Medieval people were used to the smoke, like the modern city people the exhaust smoke of cars. Furthermore we should suppose, in the Middle Ages people could make a fire with much less smoke then...

Well, in those days, as soon as it would even be possible, children had to give a hand at home, for example with raising the even younger children. Many of those things would nowadays be called 'child labour', but that was how it was...

The prehistoric houses as reconstructed in Archeon have small or no windows. Most light enters through the door and the smoke holes under the roof. Besides this, the open fire gives some light. Honestly, we do not know...

Well, far from everybody thought so. It was long before this, Pythagoras (580 - 500 BC) got to the point, the world was round. After him, many people followed - each with own reasons who thought the world was round, even in the Middle Ages...

The medieval people in Europe were Christian. They considered life as an earthly passage with death the gate which led to heaven. Real life started in heaven. To reach this...

Yes, the Vikings had both iron and steel. They had to make it themselves, through a process called “blestring” or iron smelting. This was a major undertaking, so iron was expensive. Here at Lofotr we have documented this process on a DVD which is sold in our museum store.

This question goes for prehistory and the Middle Ages as well. From the emergence of modern man (the homo sapiens sapiens, following the homo sapiens neanderthalensis) we are sure people used spoken language...