Viking House with Grass Roof: Full Bushcraft Shelter Build with Hand Tools
Building a grass roof bushcraft viking house with hand tools. We build an icelandic - style turf roof viking shelter using simple bushcraft tools and natural materials from the forest. The tiny house is build using traditional hand tools, such as drawknife, auger, axe and saw. We built the timber frame from scots pine, making mortise and tenon joints and burning the ends of the logs that go in the ground. This is an ancient technique used by our ancestors, it helps to prevent the wood rotting by driving out bugs and forming a protective layer. To support the turf on the roof of the viking home, we used hazel hurdles. These are simply green hazel sticks woven together. When they dry they set hard and form a solid structure. We also built the perimiter wall of the bushcraft shelter using this woven stick method. This viking house was inspired by the vikings of iceland. Where trees were used in building regularly, they soon became scarce and so they had to improvise. Iceland has good quality sod, and plenty of s