This housing’s relative newness still reveals a striking factor that distinguishes Iceland from the rest of Europe: Though Iceland has been inhabited for almost 1,200 years, only a modest number of its surviving domestic buildings predate the late 19th century.
That’s partly because, as Iceland emerged from centuries of hardship, it turned its back on traditional building types associated with poverty, leaving them to deteriorate. Until the late 19th century, most Icelanders lived in turf houses. Compensating for a lack of local trees, which grow slowly in Iceland, these houses built up walls of earth and grass-growing sod around timber frames. The few remaining survivals look delightful under their coating of lush grass. To live in, they were frequently damp, dark and poorly warmed by a single kitchen hearth, while the walls needed regular repair or rebuilding to remain solid and watertight. “People think of turf houses as like regular ones but with grass-growing roofs” says Icelandic TV host, former city councilor and campaigner Gísli Marteinn Baldursson, “but in fact living in one was almost like living in a hole in the ground.” [...]
These houses became the default type both in Reykjavik and elsewhere in Iceland. When the city experienced a major fire in 1915 that left metal-clad houses largely unharmed, the city made this trend into law, requiring a corrugated coating for all new houses built close together. Kept in place until the mid-1920s, this bylaw ended up giving Iceland’s capital the largest cluster of metal-clad buildings in the world.
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