Remains of Sod House, Eastern Iceland, 2012. Photo by Geoff Dobson

The Viking lodge at LŽAnse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, constructed about 1000 A.D. was a very elaborate soddy bearing remarkable similarity to some Icelandic soddies constructed in the early Twentieth Century.

Reconstructed Viking longhouse, LŽAnse aux Meadows, Newfoundland

Sod houses could be found in Russia, Alaska, Labrador. On the Great Plains, without wood or stone, its use of sod was a matter of necessity. Thus, on the Great Plains from Texas to the Canadian Prairie Provences, it was used for all manner of structures, houses, schools, barns, and near Moorcroft, Wyoming, a sod gas station.

Sod Gas Station, U.S. 16, between Upon and Moorcroft, Wyoming.

To protect the sod from erosion, it was plastered with a mixture of gumbo, sand and wood ashes.

Sod Gas Station, U.S. 16, between Upon and Moorcroft, Wyoming, 1960.

The military constructed sod forts such as as Fort Mitchell, 55 miles east of Ft. Laramie, built in 1864 to guard the Oregon Trail and the mail route.

Fort Mitchell, approx. 1868, sketch by Wm. H. Jackson

Following the failure of the Detroit Publishing Company, William Henry Jackson, in the 1930's began a series of sketches and paintings of the Oregon Trail. The sketches were primarily from memory from the time when he worked as a bullwhacker on the trail. Many of those sketches are now on display in the museum at the Scott Bluff National Monument. Following the 1868 Treaty of Ft. Laramie, Ft. Mitchell was abandoned and all physical trace of it has now disappeared.

Abandoned Sod Schoolhouse, Wyoming, location unidentified, approx. 1910,

Sod school houses were quite common in the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Of the 5,937 schoolhouses reported in Nebraska in 1890, 792 were constructed of sod. One county superintendent cpmtemded that many districts prefered to build a sod school house that may last three or four years rather than having to issue to bonds. He noted that the two reports of daily attendance in his county were from sod school houses. Another defended sod school house in that "no other kind of building is more comfortable or safe when the blizzard howls and the steady cold of winter has settled down." In 1918 there were still sod school houses in northern and western Nebraka. In 1915 there were still 54 sod school houses in South Dakota and as late as 1928, Wyoming had 8 adobe or sod school houses.

Abandoned Sod Schoolhouse,Gering, Nebraska,

Phebe West, a former teacher in a sod school house i;n; Perkins County, South Dakota, indicated that teaching in a sod school house may give "rather a poor impression, but it is not a schoolhouse to be ashamed of." Hers had a heating system fueled by locally mined lignite coat. the advantages, she noted, were "their cheapness in a country where there is no lumber, their warmth, and the fact that they are not easily wrecked by high wind. The disadvantage is that they fall to pieces so easily." The Outlook<, August 2, 1922, p. 546.

And if sod schools were common, even more frequent were sod houses constructed by homesteaders and early ranchers. One writer described the border area of eastern Wyoming and western Nebraska: "Here in one instance, in a region of bare buttes and sand hills, is a ranch with no other improvements than a low sod house, a corral, and a windmill, with a rude milk house at its base."

Soddie Homestead on the Plains of Saskatchewan, approx 1926.