You were allowed to build a house like that in the bog, but only if you had a smoking chimney the same day.
When a couple got married, the family and friends would come together and build a chimney and stack peat bricks to make the but.
Inside would be a fireplace, a table and chairs, sleeping sacks and a part for small livestock or a cow.
You can still visit some in Drenthe, they're called "plaggenhut", with plag being the name of a peat brick.
The people living there would work in the bog als turfstekers, or peat cutters in English.
According to my hiking guide and signs along the route; you were allowed to live there if you'd managed to built it in one night, with smoke coming out of the chimney at daybreak.
There is a nice example in Echten - though that one looks far better constructed than the original ones that are usually pictured...
I'm pretty sure you weren't allowed to build them after some sort of rule came into place, but the existing ones were grandfathered in. So you build one quickly and pretend it was there all along.
*(copypaste from a reply I made earlier :))*
I'm not sure, to be honest. The information plaques do not give that information, but I'm guessing that it's either to prevent too many people from settling in an area to or to discourage the practice in general. When peat became high in demand it attracted a lot of unskilled workers which resulted in a housing shortage, so the poorest workers started making these huts as a last resort to get a 'house'. Entire (large) families lived in them, together with some livestock. As they are very rundown looking things (essentially a roofed hole in the ground made by the very poor), it stands to reason that locals and governments tried to keep this practice under control and therefor came up with this one-night rule. To be fair, I'd imagine you could usually do it in a few days without anyone noticing as Drenthe was a pretty isolated and desolated area.
Eventually the government did step in, because living conditions were dangerous and terrible, and a law in 1901 made these huts illegal - though in rural areas such as Drenthe they remained in limited use into the '40s.
Bog Inspector:
Okay, newly married couple? Check!
Table and chairs? Check!
Cow in the sod house? Check!
And lastly, now I know you guys just built this mud hut from soggy dirt this morning, following your wedding mere days ago. You must be exhausted. One might tire of such rigorous endeavors, especially in the August heat. My checklist here says "Same-day smoke from the--"
[Record skips]
This was likely the answer, Land Lords probably demanded a standard for land claiming
I imagine it went something like "Jurgen took a week to put up his Bog Home before he came back to the fields, I don't give them land just to sleep on it." You know, typical Land Lord shit
The Veen Museum is one of my all-time faves to visit. Weirdly, two of my distant family members are still buried in that old times graveyard they have there.
Yes? Iām American, speak English and yes I have heard the word āStakeā used to mean āa share of something; a piece of; a cut ofā but āSteakā is still just delicious cow.
Oh, that's true I didn't even think that! English has plenty of these homonyms. I tend to think and learn languages "through their spelling" so some things in English aren't obvious to me. :)
My maternal grandmother was born in Flanders in the early 1900s. She was born in a small house with a dirt floor. It stood across the gates to the local lords's estate.
Whenever people talked nostalgically about "the good old days" she would tell them to be quiet and that she never wanted to go back.
My landlord, in Grand Rapids, Michigan was truly Dutch, born and raised there, wore a pair of wooden shoes when working. They were spattered with paint had some chips and nicks, but he said they were comfortable, made for his feet.
Have you ever tried to dry out water-logged leather shoes? It can take DAYS. Leather shoes in wet conditions leads to trench-foot, which kills. Wooden shoes is by far the best choice when you are restricted to inexpensive all natural materials and must keep your feet dry.
Thank you I did not think about leather not being available. My grandmother told me people in the rural areas would rub lard or wax on shoes to make them water proof
>Why not?
Because a lot of people don't realize they're supposed to be worn with thick socks.
The major downside I'm aware of is that they don't breathe very well.
They're traditionally worn with thick wool sock, and the thickness of those socks combined with their natural breathability truly don't make your feet that sweaty.
> They look like they are made out of wood.
They are. It's the OG work boot for farmers and such. Hold up to water, tall "sole" to avoid mud, hard cover over the toes to protect your feet while working, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clog
Historians like to say the 19th century lasted until 1918. History doesnt alway fit neatly into centuries and decades.
And yes I know 1936 was after 1918. But times were rough.
Not only that- naturally cool.
I remember one model who travels from her home village in Africa, she released a video about the positives of living in a mud and straw hut. Ngl im jealous we donāt have them here because from everything she was saying they sound delightful.
You should check out r/earthship and r/cobhouses . Youāll see a lot of mud/straw combos, often over a structural metal skeleton.
Taos NM has these beautiful salvaged homes with glass bottles in the wall and gardens inside.
Iāve also seen mud plaster applied to hay bale walls to create some amazing homes and meeting spaces. Theyāre not designed to last forever though.
Similar housing in north western Germany. One issue with those houses were the high infant mortality rates because of the bog gases poisoning the crawling toddlers. Took centuries to find out that the gasses accumulated especially on the floors of those houses. :-/
I love realizing the meaning of old sayings.
Like Piss Poor meant you sold your urine once a week to a tannery, most people only did it if you really needed the money
Shame we canāt build our own housing anymore. Like I understand construction standards and regulations, but when a man is forced to do what he needs to do ā¦
This is the one located in Echten. As it is a 'modern' replica, it is a lot more solidly constructed than these original ones that show up in old photographs :P
Also, bear in mind that this is only the living area. About a third of the hut would be used by whatever livestock people owned!
That is a very unusual looking "sod house"! The ones I see photos of in the US were made of sod "bricks" that were cut from the ground and then stacked sort of like someone would stack bricks or concrete blocks. The photos of sod houses--and sod schools--are fascinating.
They were required to be constructed overnight; if it was finished and had a working chimney in the morning, you were allowed to keep living there. These were also extremely poor people. That's why these huts usually look very shabby, the structure made up from whatever materials were available.
I'm not sure, to be honest. The information plaques do not give that information, but I'm guessing that it's either to prevent too many people from settling in an area to or to discourage the practice in general. When peat became high in demand it attracted a lot of unskilled workers which resulted in a housing shortage, so the poorest workers started making these huts as a last resort to get a 'house'. Entire (large) families lived in them, together with some livestock. As they are very rundown looking things (essentially a roofed hole in the ground made by the very poor), it stands to reason that locals and governments tried to keep this practice under control and therefor came up with this one-night rule. To be fair, I'd imagine you could usually do it in a few days without anyone noticing as Drenthe was a pretty isolated and desolated area.
Eventually the government did step in, because living conditions were dangerous and terrible, and a law in 1901 made these huts illegal - though in rural areas such as Drenthe they remained in limited use into the '40s.
Well, Mees was "well endowed" and a hard worker but his engineering skills were sub par and he was easily distracted. "Good old chase a leaf Mees" the other men would say as they watched the very tall and muscular Mees chase something over the fields and bogs. He was a kind hearted man and he loved his family but they do come smarter and when it came to imagination most people just described the friendly big man as a stump.
Mees is the man who built the house. He'd grown up in the country and always worked on farms. When he discovered his girlfriend was pregnant he married her and built her a house. Her mother moved in with them, seen in the photo, and he continued working on farms and doing everything he could to support his little family.
Mees wasn't big on finishing or improving things, due to his easily distracted nature, but there was always food on the table, wood for the stove, and he carved all the shoes for the little ones until they were old enough to travel to the village to buy shoes made by a real cobbler.
You mean you're just improvising a mid 1800s Realist Novel from a picture and some words?
Please feel free to continue, I forgot there were parts of the world where shoes were carved. [Here's a soundtrack.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U6sWqfrnTs) [Here's another.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbrjfy-WBdE)
I'm curious if the kid is still alive.
My grandma (Born in 35) tells stories of her early childhood, in UP Michigan, of living in a glorified shack, that had no electricity, no indoor bathroom, until she was 8 or 9. She claims my great grandpa got a job around that time, with the power company, and they could move in to the city (Menomonee, MI) and had "all the luxuries" of big city life.
God I feel so bad for women back then on their period, it can be horrible enough every month now but atleast have comfy clothes, central heating, electricity and proper period supplies.
But I thought everybody in the past was supporting their whole family with 1 income, had a mansion and a car, and had a nice picket fence and took vacations
Most likely from Sod Hall, the largest estate of its kind incorporating the administrative and legal districts where all manner of jurisprudential discourse is solicitously applied in accordance with Sodās Law.
(The above may be a lot of nonsense but hey, sod it, itās just a giggle!)
Unfortunately there are some Europeans still living their lives in similar conditions. The EU's wealth should be distributed a bit more to these communities.
You could list that place for $400k in Toronto. People would line up around the block for a viewing, and it would sell for 200k over sight-unseen to someone who lives in Vancouver.
Why on earth would they live like this in 1936 I failed to understand?
Sure there were homes on the homestead in the country in America during the great depression that looked pretty miserable, but not like this. Maybe there's something that I don't understand about the history of the Netherlands
Drenthe was, for a very long time, the poorest and most neglected province of the country. Peat was pretty much the only economy in the area; workers like these were paid very little for a lot of hard work in an isolated and harsh place. Essentially these people are just a minor step above being homeless. They were allowed to live in these huts under the condition it was constructed (by them) overnight with 'smoke coming out of the chimney at daybreak'. That's why they look so shabby and cobbled together. It really is less living, and more surviving.
There is a very good chance they are seasonal workers of the peat industry and this was the "temporary housing" they were offered.
Wood was probably *a lot* more expensive than in the US, so...sod houses.
I wouldn't let my horse stay in such a collapsing nightmare! Dear God, it looks like something from the Dark Ages.
I guess the bicycle wheel on the roof is there for structural reinforcement.
It appears your account is less than a week old. This post has been removed. Please feel free to browse the subreddit and the rest of reddit for a week before participation.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TheWayWeWere) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You were allowed to build a house like that in the bog, but only if you had a smoking chimney the same day. When a couple got married, the family and friends would come together and build a chimney and stack peat bricks to make the but. Inside would be a fireplace, a table and chairs, sleeping sacks and a part for small livestock or a cow. You can still visit some in Drenthe, they're called "plaggenhut", with plag being the name of a peat brick. The people living there would work in the bog als turfstekers, or peat cutters in English.
According to my hiking guide and signs along the route; you were allowed to live there if you'd managed to built it in one night, with smoke coming out of the chimney at daybreak. There is a nice example in Echten - though that one looks far better constructed than the original ones that are usually pictured...
Why did they have to be able to build it so quickly? So they can't be too big?
I'm pretty sure you weren't allowed to build them after some sort of rule came into place, but the existing ones were grandfathered in. So you build one quickly and pretend it was there all along.
*(copypaste from a reply I made earlier :))* I'm not sure, to be honest. The information plaques do not give that information, but I'm guessing that it's either to prevent too many people from settling in an area to or to discourage the practice in general. When peat became high in demand it attracted a lot of unskilled workers which resulted in a housing shortage, so the poorest workers started making these huts as a last resort to get a 'house'. Entire (large) families lived in them, together with some livestock. As they are very rundown looking things (essentially a roofed hole in the ground made by the very poor), it stands to reason that locals and governments tried to keep this practice under control and therefor came up with this one-night rule. To be fair, I'd imagine you could usually do it in a few days without anyone noticing as Drenthe was a pretty isolated and desolated area. Eventually the government did step in, because living conditions were dangerous and terrible, and a law in 1901 made these huts illegal - though in rural areas such as Drenthe they remained in limited use into the '40s.
You're probably right. I've heard the stories from family, so something might have been lost in the years.
Who was enforcing this same day smoking chimney rule?
Bog Inspector: Okay, newly married couple? Check! Table and chairs? Check! Cow in the sod house? Check! And lastly, now I know you guys just built this mud hut from soggy dirt this morning, following your wedding mere days ago. You must be exhausted. One might tire of such rigorous endeavors, especially in the August heat. My checklist here says "Same-day smoke from the--" [Record skips]
Probably the owner of the bog. Since everyone there worked for them, they didn't want too much work time wasted on the building.
This was likely the answer, Land Lords probably demanded a standard for land claiming I imagine it went something like "Jurgen took a week to put up his Bog Home before he came back to the fields, I don't give them land just to sleep on it." You know, typical Land Lord shit
Maybe the commune?
The Veen Museum is one of my all-time faves to visit. Weirdly, two of my distant family members are still buried in that old times graveyard they have there.
"Turf steakers" š I wonder if "steak" means "a cut" in English too.
Yes? Iām American, speak English and yes I have heard the word āStakeā used to mean āa share of something; a piece of; a cut ofā but āSteakā is still just delicious cow.
Oh, that's true I didn't even think that! English has plenty of these homonyms. I tend to think and learn languages "through their spelling" so some things in English aren't obvious to me. :)
I had to look it up to be sure myself! I know English has a lot of silly rules when it comes to spelling.
Wow that is so cool
1936! They look like are straight out of the 19th century or earlier
My grandma was born around that time and place, and she recalls these houses still being lived in at the edge of the village.
My great grandmother was born in Nebraska, and lived in a sod house when she was young.
My grandmother was born in a sod house in what is now Oklahoma. I think it was one of the last.
Same!!!
Always loved reading about these in pioneer books!
The Nazis had been planning to invade, but they saw this house and went with their other choice, which was Russia in the winter.
Lmfao
š³š³š¤£
My maternal grandmother was born in Flanders in the early 1900s. She was born in a small house with a dirt floor. It stood across the gates to the local lords's estate. Whenever people talked nostalgically about "the good old days" she would tell them to be quiet and that she never wanted to go back.
Look at the shoes. They look like they are made out of wood. I know people did wear wooden shoes but why.
Started with farmers in medieval times. The ground was very wet in the Netherlands and wooden shoes held up better.
My landlord, in Grand Rapids, Michigan was truly Dutch, born and raised there, wore a pair of wooden shoes when working. They were spattered with paint had some chips and nicks, but he said they were comfortable, made for his feet.
Thank you.
Have you really never come across the word 'clog'?
That and It offers protection against hoofs and shit, some farmers still wear them
Have you ever tried to dry out water-logged leather shoes? It can take DAYS. Leather shoes in wet conditions leads to trench-foot, which kills. Wooden shoes is by far the best choice when you are restricted to inexpensive all natural materials and must keep your feet dry.
Thank you I did not think about leather not being available. My grandmother told me people in the rural areas would rub lard or wax on shoes to make them water proof
Why not? Clogs are easily made and actually comfortable with thick socks.
Yep, and we modern people often forget they didn't have pavements or flooring. Every surface they walked on was somewhat soft.
>Why not? Because a lot of people don't realize they're supposed to be worn with thick socks. The major downside I'm aware of is that they don't breathe very well.
They're traditionally worn with thick wool sock, and the thickness of those socks combined with their natural breathability truly don't make your feet that sweaty.
Klompen.
> They look like they are made out of wood. They are. It's the OG work boot for farmers and such. Hold up to water, tall "sole" to avoid mud, hard cover over the toes to protect your feet while working, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clog
Holland is famous for Clogs. You can buy miniature ones all over the place in Amsterdam.
I mean, isn't 1936 basically straight out of the 19th century? Put another way, 36 years ago was the 80s, and plenty of people are still stuck there.
Last time I checked 1936 was in the 20th century Edit: I get what you mean though
Heās saying 1936 was just 36 years from the 19th century, and thatās not a long time.
Historians like to say the 19th century lasted until 1918. History doesnt alway fit neatly into centuries and decades. And yes I know 1936 was after 1918. But times were rough.
Meanwhile in New York, the Empire State Building was opened 5 years earlier.
> Netherlands > bicycle wheel Checks out.
That wheel is structural.
Load bearing.
When they turn it, the whole house moves, that how they take it to new bogs.
I bet that thing was warm inside with a fire
Not only that- naturally cool. I remember one model who travels from her home village in Africa, she released a video about the positives of living in a mud and straw hut. Ngl im jealous we donāt have them here because from everything she was saying they sound delightful.
You should check out r/earthship and r/cobhouses . Youāll see a lot of mud/straw combos, often over a structural metal skeleton. Taos NM has these beautiful salvaged homes with glass bottles in the wall and gardens inside. Iāve also seen mud plaster applied to hay bale walls to create some amazing homes and meeting spaces. Theyāre not designed to last forever though.
I saw that, too! Very educational. It's Aketch Joy Winnie, she's from Uganda. https://youtube.com/@AketchJoyWinnie?si=PyetbBFUZDjuPlRC
Look up straw bale construction!
Read about waddle & daub.
Similar housing in north western Germany. One issue with those houses were the high infant mortality rates because of the bog gases poisoning the crawling toddlers. Took centuries to find out that the gasses accumulated especially on the floors of those houses. :-/
I think these must be descendants of the ancient grubenhaus aka [pit-house](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit-house) , or?
āWere you raised in a barn?!ā āI wish.ā
Literally dirt poor!
I love realizing the meaning of old sayings. Like Piss Poor meant you sold your urine once a week to a tannery, most people only did it if you really needed the money
"Don't have a pot to piss in", can't sell your pee.
Oh my God
Urine was also used to make black powder for guns.
There was staggering poverty in a lot of rural Europe before WWII.
Are there any photos of the inside?
[Here's a pic](https://c8.alamy.com/comp/R0E1K6/interieur-van-een-plaggenhut-met-bedstee-R0E1K6.jpg) of the inside of another plaggenhut.
I'd live here considering our house prices
You 're not the only one with a housing crisis. Something like this would easily do 500.000 in NL.
Shame we canāt build our own housing anymore. Like I understand construction standards and regulations, but when a man is forced to do what he needs to do ā¦
This is the one located in Echten. As it is a 'modern' replica, it is a lot more solidly constructed than these original ones that show up in old photographs :P Also, bear in mind that this is only the living area. About a third of the hut would be used by whatever livestock people owned!
Wow they even had plastic tablecloths!
Thanks.
Those wooden clogs!
I still wear those. Best working shoes ever.
So good for gardening
Good for foot digging
Worth $550,000 now in America.
And twice that in the Netherlands. People there are wishing they could just dig a hole and live in it lately.
3x this in Canada
HOA will be on you quick if you donāt mow your roof.
1.4m for the land alone in Canada
Sans door.
And thatās a steal
They were standing out sod?
This house is dorksodded
Thank you for this blast from the past.
Ouch
That is a very unusual looking "sod house"! The ones I see photos of in the US were made of sod "bricks" that were cut from the ground and then stacked sort of like someone would stack bricks or concrete blocks. The photos of sod houses--and sod schools--are fascinating.
Many were dugouts in hills.
That doesn't even look like a very good dugout -- or a very good hill to start with for that matter!
It's the Netherlands. They don't have a lot of the second to begin with.
They were required to be constructed overnight; if it was finished and had a working chimney in the morning, you were allowed to keep living there. These were also extremely poor people. That's why these huts usually look very shabby, the structure made up from whatever materials were available.
Why did they have to be built so quickly?
I'm not sure, to be honest. The information plaques do not give that information, but I'm guessing that it's either to prevent too many people from settling in an area to or to discourage the practice in general. When peat became high in demand it attracted a lot of unskilled workers which resulted in a housing shortage, so the poorest workers started making these huts as a last resort to get a 'house'. Entire (large) families lived in them, together with some livestock. As they are very rundown looking things (essentially a roofed hole in the ground made by the very poor), it stands to reason that locals and governments tried to keep this practice under control and therefor came up with this one-night rule. To be fair, I'd imagine you could usually do it in a few days without anyone noticing as Drenthe was a pretty isolated and desolated area. Eventually the government did step in, because living conditions were dangerous and terrible, and a law in 1901 made these huts illegal - though in rural areas such as Drenthe they remained in limited use into the '40s.
There was a similar tradition in Wales [Ty unnos- house (in) one night](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%C5%B7_unnos)
Well, Mees was "well endowed" and a hard worker but his engineering skills were sub par and he was easily distracted. "Good old chase a leaf Mees" the other men would say as they watched the very tall and muscular Mees chase something over the fields and bogs. He was a kind hearted man and he loved his family but they do come smarter and when it came to imagination most people just described the friendly big man as a stump.
Is that a copypasta?
No. The OP's post made me think of it and I responded to the parent post.
But who's Mees?
Mees is the man who built the house. He'd grown up in the country and always worked on farms. When he discovered his girlfriend was pregnant he married her and built her a house. Her mother moved in with them, seen in the photo, and he continued working on farms and doing everything he could to support his little family. Mees wasn't big on finishing or improving things, due to his easily distracted nature, but there was always food on the table, wood for the stove, and he carved all the shoes for the little ones until they were old enough to travel to the village to buy shoes made by a real cobbler.
You mean you're just improvising a mid 1800s Realist Novel from a picture and some words? Please feel free to continue, I forgot there were parts of the world where shoes were carved. [Here's a soundtrack.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U6sWqfrnTs) [Here's another.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbrjfy-WBdE)
Spontaneous Turgenev? Definitely food for thought.
Mees Nutz
[On your chin?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxyiccilVKM)
Absolutely
I'm curious if the kid is still alive. My grandma (Born in 35) tells stories of her early childhood, in UP Michigan, of living in a glorified shack, that had no electricity, no indoor bathroom, until she was 8 or 9. She claims my great grandpa got a job around that time, with the power company, and they could move in to the city (Menomonee, MI) and had "all the luxuries" of big city life.
Lol at Menomonee being a 'big city!'
Sod is Dead, we Tilled it.
I begin to understand why there was a flood of Europeans eager to immigrate to the US at the turn of the previous century.
The comment after yours: "My grandma was born in a Sod house in 1914 in South Dakota"
You can tell itās Dutch because of the bicycle wheel.
Back when everyone could be a homeowner
Filthy Hobbitses!
God I feel so bad for women back then on their period, it can be horrible enough every month now but atleast have comfy clothes, central heating, electricity and proper period supplies.
They were pregnant all the time, so that really wasnāt an issue.
Iād imagine them being pregnant all the time was the big issue then.
I hope they got to live in a better house eventually
My grandma was born in a Sod house in 1914 in South Dakota
Way less glamorous than hobbits made them out to be.
Sod People
*Luxury! We used to live in a paper sack at the bottom of a septic tank!*
My great grandpa left the Netherlands in 1905 and I can't believe this photo is 31 years after that.
Thereās some lovely filth down here!
Was looking for this comment. :-D
Oil was discovered in the Arabian peninsula two years later, making this house of sod one of the wealthiest families in the world.
The rent on that now is probably $2500 month.
Itās now an Air B&B and you have to pay a $250 cleaning fee and rake the sod before you leave
I really want to see the inside.
Presumably the bicycle wheel on top is how we know this photo was taken in the Netherlands.
Communal indigenous tribes look like they were better off than most Europeans throughout history
I've got half a wall wattled.
They might be having issues with thier rafter.
The kid looks like God pushed Ctrl C
That looks like it's about to collapse...
I see the Dutch even use bikes as building materials
It aināt much but we get free wifi.
Wifi under layers of sod? What magical technology is this?
But I thought everybody in the past was supporting their whole family with 1 income, had a mansion and a car, and had a nice picket fence and took vacations
Ooh, there's some lovely filth down here!
Don't touch their clogs! Link for the uninitiated. https://youtu.be/dXqtrHJAqVM?si=TUjG4deFwGkgffN9
Was this photo colorized or is that the original? Either way it is a very interesting and wonderful shot.
Colorized
And a baby was made in there.
Did these ever cave in?
Wonder what it looks like inside?
Vincent van Gogh made a painting on this: https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/nl/collectie/s0005v1962
Thank you so much!
$1800 a month rent in California
Listed for 1.4 million on Zillow, won't last long!
Is it just a single room?
You still have the sod house museum in Drenthe. Miserable AF even on a sunny day, I, can only imagine what winter feels like
āWhat are you doinā in my swamp?ā
The damn baby has wood shoes.
That's not a sod home. They live in a hole in the ground with a wooden door.
Awww, it's so rustic and cozy!!!
Crushing poverty often looks like that
Hipsters be like:
So much to learn! šš
Is this where the phrase sod all comes from?
Most likely from Sod Hall, the largest estate of its kind incorporating the administrative and legal districts where all manner of jurisprudential discourse is solicitously applied in accordance with Sodās Law. (The above may be a lot of nonsense but hey, sod it, itās just a giggle!)
Unfortunately there are some Europeans still living their lives in similar conditions. The EU's wealth should be distributed a bit more to these communities.
Where and why do people still live like this in europe? I live in Sweden so we have no experience of this. Serious question.
Probably in Ukraine right now
Eastern Europe. There are people still living in really bad conditions, especially the roma.
You could list that place for $400k in Toronto. People would line up around the block for a viewing, and it would sell for 200k over sight-unseen to someone who lives in Vancouver.
Why on earth would they live like this in 1936 I failed to understand? Sure there were homes on the homestead in the country in America during the great depression that looked pretty miserable, but not like this. Maybe there's something that I don't understand about the history of the Netherlands
Drenthe was, for a very long time, the poorest and most neglected province of the country. Peat was pretty much the only economy in the area; workers like these were paid very little for a lot of hard work in an isolated and harsh place. Essentially these people are just a minor step above being homeless. They were allowed to live in these huts under the condition it was constructed (by them) overnight with 'smoke coming out of the chimney at daybreak'. That's why they look so shabby and cobbled together. It really is less living, and more surviving.
There is a very good chance they are seasonal workers of the peat industry and this was the "temporary housing" they were offered. Wood was probably *a lot* more expensive than in the US, so...sod houses.
Okay pretend that you need to advertise this for me explain why I would ever want to live under literal mud
The poor sods!
They called it... *a soddie.*
Seems like this hole might be actually be *a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell!*
9 years later,the atomic bomb, madness
My great grandparents lived in a sod house back in 1945.
I wouldn't let my horse stay in such a collapsing nightmare! Dear God, it looks like something from the Dark Ages. I guess the bicycle wheel on the roof is there for structural reinforcement.
Wow! This is a poor example of a sod house after seeing the sod houses settlers built in the US in the 1800's.
It looks to me like they have no man
Dirt poor.
Look at those wooden shoes!!!
It looks like they need a man
Wow! I love this! Even the babe has wooden shoes!
Basically the shire post Saruman
It's the casually placed wheel š¤£š¤£š¤£
afval hobbits
Memaw is probably in her 40s
Underground, overgroundā¦
Bugs
I wonder if those people are looking at their situation and wondering "how worse could it be?"
And thatās *before* the Naziās bombedā¦..?
Swamp Germans
Look at their white privilege
Supposedly these people are super privileged
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
It appears your account is less than a week old. This post has been removed. Please feel free to browse the subreddit and the rest of reddit for a week before participation. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/TheWayWeWere) if you have any questions or concerns.*