Houses with green roofs have been popping up here recently, by which I mean the ones with a sort of mat of sedums and green undergrowth on top like some sort of furry hat. I find it interesting to think that in Iceland they've been piling grass on top of houses for a thousand years.
My husband and I visited Iceland a few years ago, just before our daughter arrived. It was the crispest, clearest, most cathartic place we'd ever set foot in. And those turf houses look so mysteriously right in the land where a troll could pop out at you at any time.
Apparently the Icelanders originally built turf houses because they had lots more of the stuff than they had timber, and they discovered that turf kept them vastly warmer than timber or stone, in any case. Their system was to built a stone base, top it with a timber frame, then load blocks of turf onto the timber frame, sometimes even putting a second layer on top. They even got creative with it and laid it in herringbone patterns. They finished off with a little wooden front end with a door that looked more like a house as we know it.
The motivation for people here going all Icelandic and doing green roofs is that, apart from giving natural insulation on chilly nights like this one, they hold water in a way other roofs don't, so they have an amazing cooling effect in summer. And since the water stays on the roof rather than runs off, that's good in a flood. And ecologists love them because they give a safe environment for wildlife. Not to mention some extra green area in towns. And what a lovely back-to-nature way to live.......
Don't these turf houses just look as though some Icelandic folklore character is about to pop out of the front door?
1 Turf houses with flood plain behind. 2 View from a turf house across the flood plain. 3 Turf houses. All photographed in Iceland by sly06, all from Flickr under CC BY license
