(re)construction

It depends on what resources and materials were available. A possible estimate is one to two years (the reconstruction took one year to build), but we must also consider that the house seems to have been continually added to and maintained.

There were sleeping places and benches along the walls. Sometimes, in one corner of the room, the in- built structure from horizontal logs was made, where house hold items of bigger size and tools were stored...

Every dwelling house with its auxiliary structures was an independent economic unit. Each house would have been the home of one nuclear family, consisting of parents, children and grandparents...

The 9th century lake fortress consisted of 16 houses, with a habitable area of 10–30 m2. The houses were built of horizontal logs, with gently-sloping roofs, made of spruce or birch bark, as well as turf, and served at the same time as the ceiling...

Āraiši lake fortress was built on a low, frequently inundated islet in the lake, connected to the shore by means of an 80-metre-long natural bank of glacial till. In the 9th century, when the lake fortress was built, the water level in Lake Āraiši was...

Āraiši lake fortress was built and inhabited in the Viking Age (9th–10th cent. AD) by the Latgallians, one of the ancient Baltic groups. In the middle and second half of the...

It was established in the course of archaeological excavation (1965–1969; 1975–1979) that Āraiši lake fortress had been built on an island in the lake for defensive purposes and had been fortified in a similar manner to...

They sharpened the bottom end of the pile to a point using axes. They tied a cross piece of timber and attached it near the top. A person on either side of this cross piece could then twist back and forth to drive the pile into the bed of the loch.

About 90% of the things in the living quarters are copies of things found from the Viking era. The rest have been made as we think they must have looked, based on old texts and our own practical experiences...