Torp (architecture)

In modern usage, it is the classic Swedish summer house, a small cottage painted in Falu red and white,[1] and evidence of the way in which urbanization came quite late to all of Scandinavia.

Its characteristic falu röd colour is ubiquitous in Sweden and became popular due to the paint's affordability.

Since the mid-20th century, most of the surviving torp cottages in Scandinavia have come to serve as summer homes for city dwellers.

Before that, being brought up in a torp was a sign of relatively modest ancestry, with lower status than that of lifelong tenants—and very much lower than that of freeholding farmers, however small their farm—although torp dwellers were higher on the social scale than farmhands, maids and those who lived in paupers' cottages (backstugusittare).

In Danish and Norwegian, the common noun for an inhabitant of a torp is husmann/husmand – a man with a house.