Fire Beneath the Dome: Project to Evaluate the Efficiency of Clay Ovens in the Viking Museum Haithabu

Abstract

Visitors to the museum should get an impression of Viking life in Haithabu as vivid as possible – that is why from time to time we heat the clay ovens for baking or cooking (See Figure 1). We noticed that quite high temperatures are reached, but these will decrease again quickly if there is no more fire inside the oven, although it tangibly keeps the warmth for a very long time. The question we wanted to answer was: how does the temperature change proceed in concrete terms, and what conclusions can be drawn for the plausible use of ovens in the Viking era? During this experiment data concerning the efficiency of the ovens for the time frame of a daily cycle (24 hours) was evaluated.

Keywords

• furnace
• kiln or oven
• viking age
• germany