There are unnumerable root cellars in Scandinavia . The popularity of stash away food on the farm and woodland homestead has been haunting in a country with both a long tradition of DIY intellectual nourishment arise and a mood that take a scheme for winter food storage when the gardens go abeyant .
In my travels I found many cellar date back to 50 and far earlier . The one-time root cellar had heavy born stone pulley block wall , and the new ones were pelt concrete . It was interesting to notice how many were still in use even though those who built them were no longer around to fill them up with carrots , Beta vulgaris and tater .
These are the most popular crops I found in the cellars I visited . But there were also rutabaga , Brassica rapa and even some hardy flowers bulb being held over for spring planting .
Features of Scandinavian Root Cellars
The Scandinavian cellar has a few features that support out . you’re able to find exchangeable feature in other wine cellar , such as those in North America . But I fancy some particularities that give way me a sense of the builders being innovators .
The cellars were often built into a small ridgeline or hillside — often glacial morraines and eskers ( which are vulgar in northern Europe ) . This remove vantage of a few geographical features . First , the cellar gain tribute and thermal raft from the earth on three side . Second , it mean availability of ample bowlder and cobble stones to make a façade for the cellar and retention wall for the front .
However , unlike my own root cellar — which is deeply buried in my frigid moraine ridge with over 4 to 6 feet of soil cover — these Scandinavian basement were more often built toward the top of the hillside , with less soil cover and often a anatomy roof . This offer less protection from extreme cold , but the temperature in southerly Sweden are not as insensate as my own Ontario wintertime .
Still , with roof corbel maybe filled with wood chipping as an detachment and the cap covered over with snow , there must be enough trade protection . When there was no hawk roof , the rounded earthen hill would unremarkably have an overhang of corrugated alloy to keep rain and pull the wool over someone’s eyes off the doorway .
Read more : These garden veggies are root cellar rock stars !
Air Management
That being said , the cellars often had stairways down into the cellar and made use of triple air lock ! Two horizontal - style cellar - way threshold would lift up . Rhen , at the bottom of the stairway , there would be a regular vertical doorway into the second air lock , followed by a third perpendicular door into the wine cellar .
This would have a great thermal regulating effect in uttermost weather condition , despite multitude going in and out .
These cellars all had air intakes and fumes . The exhaust went out the top , a normal feature film in a wine cellar . But more often than not the cold gentle wind intake was built into the front walls or even as a slider at the bottom of the door !
Rooms
Some cellars had one room . But I saw a number of two - room cellar , with smaller cellars obtain apples with the vegetables . ( The concern overethelenegas would be minimum with only modest amounts of fruit stored at a time . ) In one case , the second room was actually the well house , with well piss cable in and out and the pump controls . Wooden crates full of filth - covered potato , bins with sand and even old deep freezers were used inside for food warehousing .
I also found larger cellars built into pitcher’s mound and barns with service department - style doors — a more commercial dash .
But what struck me most was that every homestead had a root cellar . The cellars were also found often in the woodland beside the house or even in the wooded field of study nearby , providing shadiness and cooling on the basement for summer use ! However they were designed , though , Norse root cellar appear systematically elementary , affordable and effective and have shown to be well suited to the geomorphology of the field and its peoples ’ culture of putting food by for winter .
( Check out mynew Youtube channelfor a video recording on solution cellar design ! )
Grow on ,
Zach
