PROSJEKT BRYGGEN - Hordaland fylkeskommune

08. Summary
The Bryggen Project.
The Pilot Project of Repairing Building no. IVe, Svensgården.
A report from a ”summarising seminar” on the research and development work.
The Bryggen Project’s objective is to repair the 38 un-restored buildings on the Bryggen World
Heritage Site in Bergen, which in total includes 61 listed buildings. The restoration of building no.
IVe in Svensgården is one of two pilot projects.
Following the ”Principles for the Preservation of Historic Timber Structures” (accepted by ICOMOS
1999), the project presents a special challenge with respect to traditional craftsmanship and materials.
Due to neglect of maintenance in the original building tradition, the wooden foundations are often
favourable to fungus infestations in modern times.
An interdisciplinary research team was set up with specialists in wood technology, micro -climate and
-biology, archaeology, geo-techniques and subsurface surveillance, while the Bryggen Foundation
conducted the architectural conservation and recording surveys. Each consultant would study the
building and provide a characterisation of its different strata based on his own specialist expertise. It
was essential to establish which parameters were destructive and which were conserving, as the
team’s main task was to come up with a set of restoration recommendations that would see the
building through another 300 years.
This is one of the smallest buildings on the site, with a single room on the ground floor, and a 5x6metre
timber casing. The walls are built from timber planks, fitted on top of each other and notched
together in the corners, with uprights on the inside and outside. Originally, the roof was a simple rafter
structure, with rough boards and clay roof tiles. The timber casing rests on a shallow and rather small
dry stone wall. Archaeological stratigraphic excavations showed that the floors were laid out separate
from the building, on wooden beams, which in turn were laid out on an infill layer of sand, clay and
stones. This layer was established on top of the remains of a cobblestone floor, probably from a late
mediaeval “stone cellar” (stone cellars at Bryggen were ground level.)
Building no. IVe was most likely reconstructed in the years following the fire of 1702, probably
involving only small differences to its fabric as illustrated by drawings dated 1947: an arch and an
enlargement of the door. The craftsmanship and construction techniques follow the traditions of the
other wooden buildings on Bryggen. After the 1850s, and the event of the industrialised era, repairs
are found to be made with modern thread-bolts and timber from sawmills.
Examinations showed that extensive repairs had probably been carried out round 1900 - 1920. For
instance, some of the timbers in the wall facing the eavesdrop had been replaced with concrete to a
height of 1 metre. The maintenance of gutters and drainage systems was probably already in a state of
neglect. A major provisionally repair of the whole structure was done between 1947 and the 1960s.
The roof was replaced. The walls of the timber casing were tied together using new uprights and iron
bolts in the corners. At this stage, the corners of the timber casing already must have been extensively
damaged by fungus. The decline accelerated. Fresh surface water is likely to have flooded into the
foundations, washing the salts out of the woodwork and creating a good environment for fungus and
subsequent disintegration. The floor was covered with a concrete slab in the 1960 or ‘70s. Corrugated
iron sheets and a sprinkler system probably saved the stumps. By the late 1990s only the remains of
the original building, as shown in the drawings from 1947, were left.
Following the examination and documentation stage, the building was dismantled. Its extremely poor
state of repair meant that there were huge advantages, not least educationally, to be gained from
restoring the building as part of a reconstruction process. The disadvantage was of course the loss of
authenticity.
The examination of the woodwork concluded that there was a high content of salt (NaCl) in the floor
beams, the timber walls and the bottom layer of floorboards – between 5 and 11% of the dry weight of
the wood. The distribution of salts in the building supports the hypothesis that the salt stems partly
from transportation of the timber in seawater, but mainly from spills that occurred when the premises
were used for storing salt and salted foods.
Earlier studies have shown that high salinity in the timbers of Bryggen foundations counteract fungus
infestations. There was enormous variation in the quality of the building’s timbers, ranging from
“hungry wood” to “sprinter wood”. There was little correlation between the quality of the timbers, rot
damage and salinity.
Examination of the micro biology and micro climate round and within the building confirms extensive
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