The bridge is done
It took about five months to build and a couple of months to plan but here it is! Our brand new barn bridge! It has been a delightful process with a lot of learning. And just for the record: even though I’m not in any of the pictures, I helped too…
Ta-da!
The “before and after shot”. A pile of stone with moss on it has transformed into a neatly piled pile of stones and a brand new wooden construction.
After
Before
Dismantling the rocks was a lot of hard work, starting with digging away the top layer of grass and soil and removing plenty of small trees and roots that had grown in between the rocks. This was all done with guidance from our lovely tenant who happens to be one of Norway’s fines brick layers with a specialty in building exactly these kinds of dry brick walls out of nature-stone.
He has seen it all and was not impressed by the construction of our bridge! Apparently those who built it a couple of hundred years ago cheated, building the outer walls of stone using loose rocks and soil to fill the rest up. This is also the reason why the stone construction collapsed. Soil holds the water and with changing temperatures the frost will erupt the mass.
So, the entire construction was useless and we had to remove every single stone, dig and rinse out all the soil and dirt and start all over. Since we got rid of 50% of the mass, we also had to look around the branch for more stones.
And as I have learned: a stone is not just a stone. I’m not going to elaborate on this, let’s just say I see stones in a different way now.
(Klick a picture for full screen)
Taking everything apart and digging through the soil with our hands was a very meditative process and in some ways we felt a bit like archaeologists. We found plenty of objects that testify to the former bustling farm life. Tools, bones and trash. Broken bottles and ceramics. I wonder how it all ended up here, inside the bridge.
Once we started rebuilding the bridge, we placed this replica of a “Guldgubbe” inside the stone foundation.
The “Guldgubbe” was gifted to us by Tonje and Christoffer after our wedding. It shows a man and a woman standing together, facing each other.
The word guldgubbe means "little old man of gold". This replica is from Slöinge, Hallands län in Sweden, and is dated to 400 CE.
No one really knows the true purpose of the Guldgubbe. Some say they were placed in the ground when a new building was raised, some say it’s connected to marriage and some claim it’s connected to a sacred bond between the gods and the one who got married.
We had our own reason for placing the Guldgubbe inside the bridge foundation. As a offering, we would like it to bring us luck and to keep the bridge standing for a very, very long time.
If you want to know more about Gudgubber I recommend you to visit my dear friends Tonje’s blog!
I’m very impressed by the skills of our tenant and his assistant. Moving huge rocks by hand barely using any modern tools. Putting the bridge back together, stone by stone like a puzzle.
What a skill.
We found this really weird looking stone deep inside the bridge when dismantling it.
I made a pedestal for it and my neighbor who has a fancy stone drill helped me drill a hole in it.
I think it turned out kind of cool. Now on display in our BlackBox.
When the stone foundation had the right height in the front, the carpenters could start their work.
And on a sunny morning five men heavily armed with carpentry tolls knocked on our door. The team from Stiklastadir were here.
We had pre-ordered the materials from a local sawmill. Thick logs of core wood from slow-growing pine tree.
The barn bridge was built as a free-standing construction, not attached to the barn. In one end the four support beams are resting on a buck, in the other end they are resting on the stone foundation.
The buck is “bottled” together and reinforced with hand forged tie hooks.
A cover of plank was then nailed to the support beams with hand-forged nails made by a local blacksmith.
(Klick on a picture for full screen)
You want to know the price for 200 hand forged nails this size?
Not telling you.
Now that the bridge is done we are longing for spring and for Covid 19 to come to an end.
We are planning a barn bridge party!
Thanks to Kulturminnefondet for financially supporting this project.
XoXo Ingrid Galadriel
