House of Questions

Unfortunately large parts of prehistoric house walls are only rarely preserved to allow us to ponder the question of windows. In archaeological open-air museums they reconstruct windows according to traditional house building as very small which seems probable...

The finds which we describe in the Czech Republic as buttons date to the Neolithic; they were made, for example, from bone or amber...

We do think so, as the Neanderthals buried their dead with care. Therefore we think they believed the deceased would live on in another world...

The prehistoric people did not have the possibility to brush their teeth, because they obviously did not have toothpaste or toothbrushes. Besides that they did not know anything about teeth hygiene...

The first proven fishing nets date to the Middle Stone Age and are made of twined birch bark. We have not identified fishing nets of the Old Stone Age, which does not mean...

Yes and no. Marbles were used for playing as long as we know of. In Egypt and Pre Colombian America, marbles were used, made of fired clay. Children used whatever material came to hand: polished stones, nuts et cetera...

Yes, the Vikings had both iron and steel. They had to make it themselves, through a process called “blestring” or iron smelting. This was a major undertaking, so iron was expensive. Here at Lofotr we have documented this process on a DVD which is sold in our museum store.

Nowadays, strict fire safety rules are set at parks like Archeon. Therefore, in all houses, we have fire extinguishers present. The city council in medieval times, however, already applied rules.

No beds are known from the Netherlands from the early Middle ages. In Oseberg and Gokstad (Norway) two beds were found. They look surprisingly modern: they even have a slatted bed base...

They did not have chimneys in our sense of the word, but from at least the Bronze Age we presume that makeshift chimneys, for example made from wicker and daubed with clay would take smoke from hearths through ceilings...