Log cabin
Construction with logs was described by Roman architect Vitruvius Pollio in his architectural treatise De Architectura.
He noted that in Pontus in present-day northeastern Turkey, dwellings were constructed by laying logs horizontally overtop of each other and filling in the gaps with "chips and mud".
Although their precise origin is uncertain, the first log structures were probably being built in Northern Europe by the Bronze Age around 3500 BC.
They developed interlocking corners by notching the logs at the ends, resulting in strong structures that were easier to make weather-tight by inserting moss or other soft material into the joints.
The insulating properties of the solid wood were a great advantage over a timber frame construction covered with animal skins, felt, boards or shingles.
[2]A medieval log cabin was considered movable property, evidenced by the relocation of Espåby in 1557, where the buildings were disassembled, transported to a new location, and reassembled.
The Wood Museum in Trondheim, Norway, displays fourteen different traditional profiles, but a basic form of log construction was used all over North Europe and Asia and later imported to America.
Many older towns in Northern Scandinavia have been built exclusively out of log houses, which have been decorated by board paneling and wood cuttings.
Today, construction of modern log cabins as leisure homes is a fully developed industry in Finland and Sweden.
Log cabins are mostly constructed without the use of nails and thus derive their stability from simple stacking, with only a few dowel joints for reinforcement.
Site selection was aimed at providing the cabin inhabitants with both sunlight and drainage to make them better able to cope with the rigors of frontier life.
Some older buildings in the Midwestern United States and the Canadian Prairies are log structures covered with clapboards or other materials.
Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood in Oregon was such a log structure, and it was dedicated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
In many resort communities in the Western United States, homes of log and stone measuring over 3,000 sq ft (280 m2) are not uncommon.
Crib barns were especially ubiquitous in the Appalachian and Ozark Mountain states of North Carolina, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas.
Most of the settlers were actually Forest Finns, a heavily oppressed Finnish ethnic group originally from Savonia and Tavastia, who starting from the 1500s were displaced or persuaded to go inhabit and practice slash and burn agriculture (which they were famous for in eastern Finland) in the deep forests of inland Sweden and Norway, during Sweden's 600+ year colonial rule over Finland, who since 1640 were being captured and displaced to the colony.
They encountered the Lenape Indian tribe, with whom they found many cultural similarities, including slash and burn agriculture, sweat lodges and saunas, and a love of forests, and they ended up living alongside and even culturally assimilating with them[4](they are the earlier and lesser-known Findian tribe,[5][6] being overshadowed by the Ojibwe Findians of Minnesota, Michigan and Ontario, Canada).
Even though New Sweden existed only briefly before it was absorbed by the Dutch colony of New Netherland, which was eventually taken over by the English, these quick and easy construction techniques of the Finns not only remained, but spread.
These roofs typify many log cabins built in the 20th century, having full-cut 2×4 rafters covered with pine and cedar shingles.
The purlin roofs found in rural settings and locations, where milled lumber was not available, often were covered with long hand-split shingles.
[8] Although William Henry Harrison was not born in a log cabin, he and the Whigs were among the first to use them during the 1840 presidential election as a symbol to show Americans that he was a man of the people.
A popular children's toy in the United States is Lincoln Logs, which are various notched dowel rods that can be fitted together to build scale miniature-sized structures.
