history of colorful wood houses and red roofs 1

Until a tweeter C pointed out once on a pb comment about the red roofs here, I hadn´t really noticed, as I see it all the time. From a toddler, I´ve always loved houses with charming architecture, and painted a bold color: even my earliest drawings/colorings of houses were tiny boxes with tiny window, rounded cobbled stone paths, round tile roof, colored or painted red, blues, green, yellows, with chimneys of heart-shaped smoke, green grassy mountains and sea. REALLY, I actually have one of them, and it looks exactly like our house--I remember showing it to T, smiling. Even then, somehow without ever having grown up or seen any house remotely like that, it is what I had in my mind, my imagination. Well, or maybe I must have seen it in one of the bazillion Prince Charming Happily Ever After fairtales of lands far far away where they had such things, such as Hansel & Gretel, which I still tell our kids about. We make it up as we go, with a different ending which usually leaves the kids in charge of the Witches cottage industry of organic edible architecture and brooms;)


Anywho! So, all that to point out that here the houses are usually a color, and even the white ones have charming details such as white gingerbread cutouts above the windows and doors with charming shapes of cutout breathing spaces; but most houses and buildings here range from reds, greens, oranges, black to blue, yellow, and many variations of a traditional 2 and 3-color combination such as red-green, red-white, yellow-green-red, black-navy, yellow-red, or the opposites. Some houses have 4 or more colors, with the main house a color, then the other colors being in little accents in trimwork such as the trims around the doors and windows, roofs, or tile trim.

Roofs here come in many colors, and different types of tiles, including ceramic, dull weathered stone (one of my faves), copper in both shiny or weathered green patina, wood (yes wood roof planks in several different styles), grass with flowers (yes, roof of grass and flowers!:)), Mediteranean style shiny or dull rounded and undulating tiles, etc. Shiny black, matte colors, shiny colors, or a combination. Usually the wood is not painted but weathered. The wood planks are like the traditional boats here, plank built up over plank so there is no gap, nailed down either with nails of wood (a carpentry detail) or square-headed nails of maybe copper, for instance. The grass roofs have a specific kind of under support which lets the grass drain, and prevents water from leaking into the actual roof beams.

Really had a super enjoyable day today, gorgeous views as usual, and even though the sun came out numerous times and that was great, I really enjoyed walking and sightseeing, running errands in the rain! I was dressed well, so that I was warm and dry. Fab day!


Love the architecture here, and the colors of the roofs and buildings really shine now with all the autumn colors! One of the houses, for instance, along the Starefossen (high up the mountain across from Ulriken) was the deep traditional barnred, and had a huge gorgeous sugar maple in full red bloom, both seemed to be the same color. Yet, they also complimented and contrasted each other superbly, with the background of the back of Mount Ulriken swathed generously in every autumn color from red to gold to green and yellow! A photo would have been great, but I didn´t want to miss the view! I was riding the bus, not walking this time, so just enjoyed the view, making note to try to get it tomorrow on camera to blog or vlog!

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Back to the colors, and  colors and colors!



Traditional house paint for wooden homes in Norway is made from linoljemaling, linseed oil paint, and traditionally they come in a handful of bold colors from white, black, barn red, yellow ochre, dark olivey sage green, deep cobalt blue. Our house was painted various times in the dark olivey green when it was built by the kids greatgrandfather, and when their farfar ( father´s father aka grandad) and his wife their grandmother (farmor, which means their father´s mother) moved in; we painted it a deep cobalt blue and white when we moved in. And now it has finally been painted a deep navy pitch black color, a traditional linseed oil paint, with a black navy trim or white trim both in traditional linseed oil paints made by a company in Oslo, which I can not at this moment recall the name or find their website! sorry!,)

It takes a few coats of paint, onto a well-prepared surface, starting with a layer thinned out with turp or similar. It is timeconsuming to paint, but it lasts for a long long time without much to maintain it, is fantastic for weatherproofing the wood, keeps the wood more waterproof, and looks fantastic! Well worth the cost. Just make sure once you order it you plan to use it within a reasonable time, and mix it well before immediate use, or the layers of oil and pigment etc will not be consistent. Like any painting of a huge surface, mix different tins to get a consistent color.

The traditional brushes are rounded, angled variously, metal banded-wood with natural bristles, various sizes from tiny (what I use for painting fine art small 24-36" canvases) to large for houses. Plus for specific jobs such as trim. Will try to add a photo, but like this:

Traditional wood paintbrush shapes still used today, fully rounded, angled, etc. Paintbrushes in Norwegian is pensel, or maling pensel, or specific shape such as oval pensel.

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Red, a pigment by-product of copper mining (Rørøs is known for its copper mines), was the traditional color for barns, homes, sheds/outbuildings, outhouses as it is traditionally the least expensive to make out of the traditional ingredients linseed, which was still expensive, never cheap. It still is not a cheap job to paint a house, but linseed has such a lovely finish both texturally and look/ finished color. Nowadays many of the companies which still produce linseed can make it in more colors or are willing to do so. The company we used sent us a paper envelope of tiny flat blocks of wood painted in one of each of their main few colors, so we could see the exact color painted on wood. Greens and the azure blue came later, but were about as expensive as yellow.



White was the most expensive and used by the most well-to-do, with yellow being nearly as. Many houses, in say the city, would have the side facing the street (most seen side) painted with the nicest/most expensive paint, then cheaper paint for the other sides.

According to what I´ve been told and have read, there is a definite pattern of choice of colors also by rural versus city:

-rural countryside, in order: barn red, ochre, blue (bright bold), green (not grass green, but a dark olivey sage), grey, other

-city, in order: white, blue (bright bold), grey, ochre, barn red, green (not grass green, but a dark olivey sage). other.

Out here in the countryside, there are quite a few bright bold blue, red, ochre, yellow, grey, white, multi-2-and-3-traditional color patterns as described elsewhere above, with even white choices with charmingly-detailed wood trims or designs of house. With the high number of farms, which are usually the barn red wood, but many are of stone of different types with stone roofs. Some of the stone roofs are huge large slabs of stone, which by the sheer weight alone I am always amazed to wonder how much they had to have shored up the building enough in order for the building to carry such weight, let alone how they carried and lifted it all by hand! Traditional buildings here,as is our house, are made from thick lincoln-log type construction, with rounded or squared off logs (ours are squared off), with equally secure roof. Basements, groundfloors, as ours, usually are of solid stone partially carved directly from the solid rock which the land is here, plus an additional decorative touch sometimes of cement over the actual stone, then paint. Often the stonework has been left to show as in stacked dry or cemented stone walls, such as at our house.

Black painted wooden homes, btw, are not just attractive imho, but because of the black color, they naturally absorb more of the heat when it is warm out, so apparently supposedly are slightly warmer in winter. Lots of traditional wooden homes here are painted black. It´s such a popular color in fact, our neighbors also is black!

For the record, if anyone was wondering: the main colors on our private road are black, then ochre, then red. All have pretty English-style gardens intermingled within a wild native landscape--the local mountains and sea, and native plants such as blueberry, lingonberry, heather, foxgloves, stinging nettles,yellow poppies, raspberries, juniper, conifers, birch etc which grow wild everywhere.

Most of the rooftops in our "neighborhood", if not all, are traditional stone like this and this.


PHOTO OF HUS VED SIDEEN SuMMERHUS


Image search for black house which in Norwegian is svart hus to show example of typical.


PHOTO OF OUR HOuse in summer