The History of the Log cabin

Throughout history humans have tried to find a safe place to live. The need to find a warm and cosy living place to protect the family from the elements and the environment was the most important thing in their lives. Wood was the easiest material to find and was also the easiest to work with. The first that we know of Cabins date back to Roman times but there is a fair bit of evidence to suggest that they were created before that in some form or other. If you’d like a more up to date log cabin, then there are plenty of log cabins for sale in Northern Ireland. Why not have a look at http://logcabinsnorthernireland.com/ for some nice ideas.

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The log cabin is mentioned in Greek texts as possibly coming from Scandinavia and Northern Europe’s Bronze age. Its not much of a surprise to find that out as there was an abundance of trees like Pines and Spruces and these are easy ones to work into logs. One of the advantages of the log cabin in medieval times was that it was classed as a movable property, not that the owners would want to move it as this meant a lot of work, but because it was classed as moveable it gave then certain tax rights and privileges. A massive advantage was that the cabin could be put together without nails, metal being expensive and hard to come by anyway, by using a doweling system carved out of the logs themselves. It also suggested that the cabin was a movable property as you could take it apart and put it somewhere else like a larger jigsaw puzzle. The other advantage to this was that you could replace rotting or damaged pieces by simply cutting a new section out of a tree, take out the pieces to get to the rotting part and just slot another one in. Of course, this is a bit easier than it sounds but it provided a practical solution to saved them having to go and build a whole new cabin.

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As immigrants left Europe for the New world of North America in the late seventeen hundreds they faced the same problems that their ancestors had; where and what do we live in to protect us from the elements and people that might mean us harm. The answer was the humble log cabin and again there were great forests of similar timber to be had. To the Scandinavian settlers this was easy work, but they had to teach it the German and British settlers who did not have clue. Well done the log cabin. First home of the USA.