Pastorale · Rollag i Numedal, Norge · 60° N

Tyri

Houses cut in winter.

Laft — log houses hewn by hand from malm pine, in the valley that still keeps Norway's oldest wooden buildings. The yard has worked in Rollag since 1911.

How a corner locks →Commission a house →
A half-raised log house frame of hand-hewn pine on stone footings in a snow-covered yard, dark spruce hillside behind.
Tunet at midday, February — a bolighus at course eleven

Skogen · the forest

One pine, felled below minus five.

A wall begins as a standing tree, chosen in the deep cold. Malmfuru — the dense, resin-heavy heartwood pine of a slow-grown Numedal hillside — is felled in January and February, when the sap is down and the timber will neither check nor blue as it dries.

Felling
Jan–Feb, sap down
Timber
Malmfuru heartwood
Age at fell
120–180 years
Seasoned
Two winters, barked
A finished log house with a turf roof standing alone in deep snow, dark spruce forest behind under a pale winter sky.

A finished house, its timber cut two winters beforeRollag

Axe-faceted crossing log heads at a laft corner, each end showing the pale ring and radial drying check, dusted with snow.

Tunet · the yard

Every log is fitted to the one below it. Only then is it lifted away.

The house is raised twice — once in the yard, dry-fitted course by course so each log is scribed to its neighbour, then struck down, numbered, and carted to the site to be raised a second and final time. Nothing is cut to a drawing. Each log is cut to the log it will lie on.

Kinning, medfar, nov — the same three cuts, ten thousand times.

Novet · the corner

The corner locks without a single nail.

  1. 01 — Kinning · the faces

    The log's two faces are hewn flat with the broadaxe — following the grain of the tree, not a chalk line.

  2. 02 — Medfar · the long groove

    The underside is hollowed along the meddrag's scribed line, so the log rides the whole back of the one below it.

  3. 03 — Novet · the corner

    Each head is notched over the crossing log. Every course you lay binds the wall running the other way.

  4. 04 — Vekta · the lock

    Green timber dries, the medfar closes over the log beneath, and the joint tightens for a hundred years.

No nails. No glue. No iron. The weight of the wall is the fastener.

GRUNNMUR — STONE FOOTING

Husa · the houses

Each house is one commission — never a model from a catalogue.

Tyri raises a handful of houses a year: a bolighus for a family, a loft in the old Numedal manner, a seter high on the summer pasture. Shown here as they stand, not as a range to choose from.

Interior of a finished log room: pale timber walls, a plank floor lit by a small deep-set window, a black cast-iron wood stove and a plain bench.
Stova — the main room, one window to the south and a jernovnBolighus, 2024
  1. 01

    Bolighus

    A dwelling house. One or two storeys, turf or slate roof, laft throughout.

  2. 02

    Loft

    The Numedal storehouse — a raised, galleried loft on posts, the region's own form.

  3. 03

    Seter

    A summer-pasture cabin, small and tight, built to sit empty through the winter.

Tida · the settling

A log house moves. Tyri says so, and hangs the doors to expect it.

Green timber gives up its water for years, and a wall of it settles as it dries — a three-metre wall drops about four centimetres in its first two winters. This is not a fault to be hidden; it is designed for. Door and window frames slide in grooved posts, gaps are left above them, and the wall comes down onto its openings without ever binding. A hundred years on, the joints are still closing.

Settlement
≈ 4 cm per 3 m, first two years
Allowance
Sliding frames, over-height gaps
Moisture
Felled ~30% → seated ~12%
Lifespan
Six centuries, standing in the valley
A lafter in a dark wool jacket and knit cap swings a broadaxe along the flank of a pine log, pale chips scattered on the snow, his breath visible in the cold.

Folka · the people

Four generations, one broadaxe grip.

The yard is worked by hand — the broadaxe, the meddrag scribe, the adze. What passes down the four generations is not a machine but a grip and a way of reading grain: how to swing along the fibre so the faceted face sheds water for centuries. The chips on the snow are the only offcut; nothing else leaves the log.

Working since 1911, felling below minus five, breath on the axe-head.

Tinging · the commission

Commission a house. It begins with a standing tree.

A commission opens two winters ahead of raising day — the timber has to be felled and seasoned first. Tell Tyri the ground, the family, and the form; the yard will answer with the trees it would fell for it.

Write to the yard →See how a corner locks →
Lead time
Two winters, timber first
Houses a year
A handful, no more