Orust - mountain air Kvarndalen

Location and surroundings of object

Henån is a locality in the Swedish province of Västra Götalands län and the main town of the municipality of Orust. The settlement is named after the river of the same name that runs through here. The prefix hen means grindstone in the local dialect and refers to the bedrock, which is particularly suitable for these tools. Henån is mainly an important trading center in the summer, when the tourist flows on the island of Orust increase. The place was first mentioned in a document in 1420 as the name of a homestead. In the wake of trading establishments and inns that were established in the middle of the 19th century, the locality grew. Henån received a permanent steamship line and was declared the first seaside resort on Orust. In the 1960s, a road to the Tjörn Bridge was built, and these favorable conditions resulted in the settlement being declared the main locality when the municipality of Orust was founded in 1971. This is how building was done on Orust
How settlement developed on Orust can be read in the texts about the farmers from the Stone Age up to the development in the outskirts in the 19th century. But what did the houses themselves actually look like? Let us take a short journey through the ages and, as far as possible, look at the different building methods. The longhouse from the Viking Age was replaced during the early Middle Ages by a timbered farmstead with several houses. The "Ryggåsstuga" (smoke cottage) became the common dwelling house in the 18th century. Sources indicate that at that time, people began to raise the walls and insert ceilings. In this way, additional attic space was created, which served as storage or, during the summer, also as a sleeping place. The Linnaeus student Pehr Kalm visited such a house on Otterön in the parish of Kville in 1742: "The houses are well built, but the logs inside are not shaped or smoothly hewn; only the bark was removed. Over their huts they always had a sleeping room or a loft, where they slept in the summer, but there was no stove up there."
Smoke cottage of the Hageskärs croft near Nötskär, demolished in 1914 Photo: Erik Askland's collection. The only treatment the houses may have received was an impregnation with herring oil. The end grain was especially to be protected. The fireplace, as a source of light and warmth, remained the center of the dwelling. Kalm noted during his visit to Orust that the stoves and chimneys were built from fieldstones, which were coated with clay to prevent cracking. The windows were made of wood and fitted with narrow mullions. Glass was expensive and not everyone had the necessary money for it. The roofs were covered with seaweed, peat, or wood, or whatever was available at the time. Houses with a single width
"Enkelstuga" (single house) is the name given to the house type that consists of a "Stuga" (living room) with a chamber and a side extension. The Stuga served as a living space, where people slept but also prepared food. This house type existed well into the 19th century. Floor plan of a Enkelhaus

Another variant was that the kitchen was arranged in front of the living room, to keep the bothersome smoke away. In the beginning, the Stuga was timbered. The kitchen had simple features; later, however, the kitchen areas were also timbered. This house type with kitchen and room or parlor was widespread during the 19th century. On the west coast, it is also called Einfachhaus, or house with single width. In the same rhythm, as over the course of the 19th... When the quality of saw blades improved in the nineteenth century, it became fashionable in Bohuslän to clad residential buildings with wooden paneling. If one did not have the financial means for all four walls, one settled for the two sides most exposed to wind and weather. The panels were initially cover boards without sawn edges. These rough boards, which today are almost only seen on simple sheds, soon had to give way to parallel-sawn boards with profiled cover strips. In the 19th century, it also became common to paint the houses. At first, red paint was widespread. The royal government official J. F. Hellberg gives a general description of the buildings on Orust and Tjörn around the year 1820: "Few places are as well built as these. Usually, each farmer has a dwelling covered with tiles, clad with boards and painted, which has a living room, a guest chamber and a kitchen, as well as a chamber in the attic." The barn buildings are also timbered depending on the size of the farm, and most are provided with a tiled roof. The people on the skerries also have timbered and tiled huts; but here, poverty is evident everywhere. "In the meantime, we know that things were not so 'modern' everywhere. During the land consolidation in Nedre Hoga in 1841, only one of the total of nine residential houses was painted; not a single barn had a tiled roof, all had thatched roofs.
Towards the end of the 19th century In the course of the century, light linseed oil paints became increasingly common. After the turn of the century, these paints dominated residential buildings.
From single house to duplex
It can be assumed that space was often very tight in the single houses. This was especially true in the coastal areas, where there were not as many storage sheds as in the more rural regions. People managed with all kinds of extensions, lean-tos, and shed roofs, which were mostly attached to the long sides of the houses. Lean-to roofs were usually created by extending the eaves of the main house. It often happened that the lean-to roof was drawn down over the entire rear side of the house and two rooms were set up underneath: a kitchen and a junk room. Later, the lean-to roof was replaced by a new roof over the now wider house. This made the attic larger and additional attic rooms could be set up. The result was a house with double width; called: the "West Swedish double house." This was widespread on the west coast.
Floor plan of a double house Towards the end of the 19th century, the chambers were as large as the living room and the kitchen. Such a double house had an almost square floor plan with a kitchen and three approximately equally sized rooms around a central fireplace. A semi-detached house with a raised knee wall received a spacious attic with several rooms. The houses had a gable roof with a steep pitch of over 30°. The roofs were covered with single-wave tiles. The roof overhangs were clad with beadboard (special decorative battens), and the verge boards and gable peaks were decorated with profiled moldings and fretwork.
The "simple houses" were still being built until around 1910. On Orust, a particular variant was common. Next to the kitchen there was an anteroom with an attic staircase with a chamber on one side or a storage room on the other.
The construction style of the late 19th and early 20th centuries is characterized by symmetrical facades and the varied interplay of different panels, wooden decorations, and white oil paint.
Hall buildings and cottages
In addition to the “single and double houses,” of course, a large number of other houses were also built. These were mostly found on the properties of the upper or lower classes; buildings are an example of this. The floor plan is divided into six parts and has its origins in France. In the 17th century, this type of house appeared in Sweden as residences for officers and priests. In the second half of the 19th century, such "hall buildings" were also constructed by large farmers. Six-part floor plan
Another extreme are the stone cottages and huts, which today mostly lie in ruins and are overgrown in the forests and on remote meadows. Cottagers, eccentrics, and other people without property lived in them. Sometimes they had floor plans like the "simple houses," but they often consisted of only a single room. Examples of this can be found in Kultehamn and in the stone cottage on Gullholmen
Photo: Hjalmar Pettersson, 1989.
Until the end of the 19th century. In the centuries, most residential buildings were constructed from wood. For the farm buildings, it was only in the 19th century that panels began to be applied to a simple framework. Horizontal beams were replaced by sawn planks; first horizontally, later vertically. A good place to build
The houses were often built in earlier times at the edges of fields and meadows, next to forests and rocks. The fertile soil was much too valuable to build over. Furthermore, people wanted to build on ground that was reasonably dry and drained. They aimed to build the houses on the sheltered sides of hills or at the edge of a grove with southwest sun. "Various farms could be seen on Orust; with charming dwellings, beautiful fields and meadows, framed by the surrounding rocks and hills, which means they are not exposed to severe cold or strong winds and can enjoy the warm rays of the sun for longer." Linné during his journey in Bohuslän, 1746
Farm buildings
The arrangement of the farm buildings within the farmyards was subject in some parts of the country to strict traditional rules. Tjörn and the southern parts of the inland were attached to the South Swedish tradition with their enclosed inner courtyards, while central and northern Bohuslän preferred a so-called free arrangement of the buildings. Orust seems to have been situated at the transition between these two traditional building methods. Boathouses and Barns
The population living by the sea also had a need for utility buildings. The fishermen needed sheds for equipment and sails, and the owners of coastal sailing vessels needed warehouses for their goods and merchandise. Around 1880, the boat builders began to build their boats indoors. With the increasing work at sea during the second half of the 19th century, The sheds and warehouses at the harbors and beaches—seaside huts, which we still perceive today as a typical feature and as a matter of course along our coasts—are therefore a relatively new phenomenon. Judging by old maps, there were only a few of these until the middle of the 19th century. There were also barn buildings in the fishing villages. Most have since been demolished, but a few are still used today as wood storage sheds or warehouses.