46 Norivay ajid the A^orzvegians 



the middle ages has crept into the ornamentation of 

 its porch. 



This Eeunebo house would perhaps be an intermediate 

 form between the ground-plans B and C. We might 

 have given this intermediate form, but it will easily 

 suggest itself to the reader. The small plain quad- 

 rangular one-roomed building has only this of distinc- 

 tiveness about it, that it has some form of protecting 

 chamber, or at least portico before the door of the 

 house.i This is rendered necessary by the severity of 

 the weather, when snow may be piled up high against 

 the door, and without some protection would melt there 

 and run over the floor of the room within. This pro- 

 tecting fore-room, fore-hall may be simply a sort of 

 portico; the roof carried forward a little and resting 

 upon pillars. Among places where I have myself 

 chiefly noticed this form of building, I will mention 

 the well-known Eomsdal ; and I would advise the 

 traveller who passes up that lovely valley to take note 

 of the few scattered huts which he will see upon his 

 way, and of their overhanging eaves resting upon two 

 wooden pillars in front of the door. In some cases 

 this portico has further decayed to be a mere over- 

 hanging of the eaves, or practically disappeared alto- 

 gether ; the smter cottages show it in this state, for 

 they, as I have said, are houses for summer only. But 

 in a very large number of cases the same portico has 

 developed into a closed-in room, a sort of vestibule to 

 the house. A typical sort of house now-a-days (which 

 is still built upon old lines) has a hall preceded by this 

 vestibule, and running down the middle of the house, 



1 Suggested by the dotted square in Fig. B, p. 43. 



