Høybøen

Høybøen is an isolated farm that had been worked up to 1349-50. There are fairly certain data for a period of use between 1100 and the middle of 1300 when the farm was left desolate following the Black Death. Høybøen may possibly have been in use during several periods.

This farm site has contained two parallel houses in the yard, with a slate-covered path in between an east-west orientation. The longest house appears to have had two rooms around a central corridor. The archaeologists interpret one of the rooms as an ‘inside-house’, perhaps a rough kitchen or living room with a fireplace in the corner, and the other room as a cowshed. To the far west there may have been a shed and/or a workshop. The smallest house has had two rooms and a shed facing east, perhaps a store and a room with a fireplace. It seems that the houses have had wooden walls inside outer walls of stone. One of the houses may have had a slate roof.

We therefore envisage houses with several rooms in a row, with sheds, stores and passageways around the main rooms, as we know the principles of houses with multiple rooms of the type still standing at Boga on Radøy. Whether such houses with several functions under the same roofs are called ‘multiple room houses’ or ‘long houses’ may be a question of definition. It is the association of primary functions that is the interesting aspect; living room, rough kitchen, storeroom and a loft room. In the Middle Ages it is clear that both long houses and smaller houses have been found side by side, depending on the situation of the terrain and location on the site.