Sod house

The sod house or soddy[1] was an often used alternative to the log cabin during frontier settlement of the Great Plains of Canada and the United States. Primarily used at first for animal shelters, corrals, and fences, if the prairie lacked standard building materials such as wood or stone, or the poverty of the settlers precluded purchasing standard building materials, sod from thickly-rooted prairie grass was abundant, free, and could be used for house construction.[2] Prairie grass has a much thicker, tougher root structure than a modern lawn.

A sod house on the American prairie, 1901
A sod farm structure in Iceland
Saskatchewan sod house, circa 1900
Unusually well appointed interior of a sod house, North Dakota, 1937

A type in Alaska is a barabara.

Construction of a sod house involved cutting patches of sod in rectangles, often 2 ft × 1 ft × 0.5 ft (61.0 cm × 30.5 cm × 15.2 cm), and piling them into walls. Builders employed a variety of roofing methods. Sod houses accommodated normal doors and windows. The resulting structure featured less expensive materials, and was quicker to build than a wood frame house. However, sod houses required frequent maintenance and were often vulnerable to rain damage, especially if the roof was also primarily of sod. Stucco was sometimes used to protect the outer walls. Canvas or stucco often lined the interior walls.

While the influence of the sod house cannot be overlooked, stone or timber was preferred. Where railroads existed, allowing easy access to building materials, most houses and buildings of the period were framed.

Notable sod houses
A Norse sod longhouse recreation at L'Anse aux Meadows

Sod houses that are individually notable and historic sites that include one or more sod houses or other sod structures include:

Iceland
  • Skagafjordur Folk Museum, turf/sod houses of the burstabær style in Glaumbær.
  • Arbaer Folk Museum.
Canada
  • Addison Sod House, a Canadian National Historic Landmark building, in Saskatchewan.
  • L'Anse aux Meadows, the site of the pioneering 10th–11th century CE Norse settlement near the northern tip of Newfoundland, has reconstructions of eight sod houses in their original locations, used for various purposes when built by Norse settlers there a millennium ago.
United States

See also

References
  1. Blevins, Win. Dictionary of the American West. Fort Worth: TCU Press, 2008. Soddy. ISBN 0875654835
  2. Sod Houses Forest Preserve District of Cook County (Illinois)

Further reading
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