A traditional turf roof blankets a wooden house in Iceland. Photograph by Danita Delimont, Getty Images In 1918, Iceland gained independence from Denmark, setting in motion a wave of nationalism ...

A land of vast open spaces, steaming blue lagoons, geysers, and powerful volcanoes, Iceland is beautifully raw and remote, but not exactly hospitable to humans. When the Norse and British ...

In this video, we explore an abandoned turf house in Iceland that looks like it’s straight from a fantasy novel. Built in the ...

A somewhat unique characteristic of the turf houses in Iceland is the timber structure and interior panelling that serve as an armature for the insulating turf. Since timber was in short supply ...

Built and enlarged over the 18th and 19th Centuries, and used as a priest's house as well as a farmhouse, Glaumbær is Iceland's most extensive and intact group of turf buildings. The main complex ...

clustered turf houses. Yet despite turf’s vital role in Iceland’s history, you won’t see much of it today. Over a few brief generations, Icelanders have grown ashamed of and buried this ...

Their style “varies as much as the number of turf houses made — no two are the same,” said Eyjolfur Eyjolfsson, who lives in the Austur-Medalholt plains near Selfoss, in southern Iceland.

Known as "torfbæir", these ingeniously designed homes helped settle one of Europe's least-hospitable environments. With its lonely lava fields, sheer bluffs and stark boulder-strewn plains ...

All things considered, it's surprising Iceland's settlers even survived. That they did can be attributed to one factor above others: torfbæir (turf houses), which were used for shelter since the ...