Log cabins

I have long wondered whether the ancestors of Finns and Estonians invented the log cabin, and CA Weslager provides an answer. In The Log Cabin in America (1969), he writes that its “construction has its roots in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe by the Bronze Age around 3500 BCE”. 

“The Finns were accomplished in building several forms of log housing, having different methods of corner timbering, and they utilised both round and hewn logs,” Weslager writes. Techniques included “interlocking double-notch joints, the timber extending beyond the corners”, the same method used in the Estonian 20m3 kitset summer cabin that I bought in 2022, imported into New Zealand.

Solid timber construction provides much better insulation against the cold northern winters than frame and hide, felt, board or shingle-covered structures. Filling in the chinks between the logs with moss or clay helps keep in the heat.

More recently reported archaeology is that log building construction was widespread across northern Europe and Siberia at Bronze Age sites, hinted at from post holes, hearth stones and other artefacts. Scots pine and spruce would have furnished long, straight stems for the purpose. The technology also passed to northern North America.

Writing in The Museum of The Wood Age (2022), Max Adams notes waterlogged tenon and mortise jointing in the wooden lining of a well, dated to 5090 BCE, at a site near Leipzig, Germany. This is the oldest evidence of notched log-end jointing, traced to the Neolithic linear band ceramic culture in Europe.  

There is daylight between the two accounts; so, who actually transmitted construction techniques to whom, or were log-joining methods at corners independently invented at different places and times?

Perhaps, the ancestors of Finns and Estonians were more widespread through northern Europe than often thought: a question that arose around the discovery of an ancient wooden comb in a bog in Denmark.

Alternatively, Finnic peoples picked up log cabin building techniques on arriving at the Baltic into an already settled, though sparsely populated landscape. A 2020 book on Estonian archaeology suggests that this westward migration into Scandinavia and the Baltic took place as recently as 1000 BCE.

That said, the Finnic migration is associated with a higher level of social hierarchy, demonstrated by clusters of farmsteads around a much larger longhouse in the archaeological record, and building hilltop forts of which stone foundations still remain. That suggest the newcomers brought their construction technology with them, and deployed it in their new surroundings.

Be that as it may, a family can build a log cabin from scratch in a pine or spruce forest within a few days, if they have the right tools, and if the building does not have to endure through multiple generations.

In Mediaeval times in Scandinavia, log cabins were moveable property, able to be dismantled, moved to a new location and rebuilt. It was not unusual to replace any rotten timbers with fresh replacements.

In Estonia today there is a revival in restoring old farmsteads, many built using log cabin methods. This looks to be quite an undertaking; one problem I have observed is that timber where it is in contact with the ground is usually rotten, putting the whole structure on a lean, and also placing the roof under stress. 

The alternative would be to start from scratch, and put in proper concrete foundations down below the frost level. This is a tip from a wonderful book written in 1948 by Conrad Meinecke who built dozens of log cabins, including six for his own family, dotted around US forests, including in his home state of New York.

“Today, construction of modern log cabins as leisure homes is a fully developed industry in Finland and Sweden,” Wikipedia says - also in Estonia where a scan online reveals more than a dozen companies offering prefab and kitset homes, many based in the countries mentioned, as well as in Poland.

Search on Estonian log cabins

Postscript: if importing kitset Estonian huts into New Zealand, a friendly tip: make sure the roofing and doors are wind-proof. This week I put 4 large bolts, top and bottom, on the French doors of my summer (and winter) cabin because they blew open in freak winds, and thrashed about.