Our storehouses – Buin kans

Stabbur, or buin as it is called locally, from as far back as the Viking Age were used as a storehouses. Meal, meat, meat and dairy products were usually placed on the first floor and grain upstairs. In the early Middle Ages these buildings were often used to store clothes and as sleeping quarters. In the Middle Ages, these buildings were set directly on the ground, perhaps resting on a stone at each corner.

From the book “Our old peasant culture” we have the following extract;

In Numedal and Telemark later came the tradition that the stabbur  would stand on a stump. It is certainly the stabbur’sfunction as a food store on the ground floor which meant that the stump construction took over. … This particularly occurred in the period from 1650 to up in the 1800s.

In addition to lodging,  the stabbur was used to store food In some districts, including Numedal, the stabbur  supplanted the old storehouse,… You can still  often see a small one-story “vesle bur” at the bottom of the stabbur, with the folk name “big-bu”. “Vesle bue” were used to store grain.

Farms with two buir often call one “North” and one “South” and farms with a large and small buir call one “store-bue” and “vesle-bue”

Literature on the topic:

• “Our old folk culture”, Visted, and Stigum, Cappelen
• “Norwegian houses from the Middleages”, Arne Berg