Golta - Long house

In the years between the wars a major registration of houses and house costumes, house construction methods, fireplaces and forms of housing clusters was started in West Norway – an ambitious mapping of everything that came under the name “Registration of Culture and Geography in West Norway”. One of the places of which material was gathered in 1938 was an old multi-room house at Golta; new and interesting material for the researchers from the Historical Museum, but well known within the local building tradition through several generations.

In the long house at Golta there are living quarters and a store with a passage in between, placed next to a smokehouse with a small room, possibly a small sleeping quarters, and a “framework for a rough kitchen, obviously of recent date”, as is stated in the report from “The Antiquarian Building Committee” in 1927.

The smokehouse shows traces of decoration, and judging from the timber it is reasonable to date this building to some time in 1600. It is interesting to note that alongside the house there is a narrow timbered room. This may be what is referred to in written sources by “A timbered room in the outer passageway”. In front of the storeroom there is a passageway, with a couple of steps up to the passage between store and living quarters. The timber in the store and in the westernmost living quarters indicates a date around 1700. The length of this row of buildings is around 20 metres.

In more recent times this combination house has been shared by two farms.