The floor plan of the house left shows the animal stalls located opposite to the front door. Later, all but the people were moved to out buildings. In the earlier part of the Norse period, it appears that everything was contained in the longhouse: animals, people, tools, food storage, work shop. Each homestead typically consisted of a longhouse and multiple out-buildings. Outside the fenced areas were the fields used for cultivation or grazing. Typical farm settlements took the form of a central cluster of buildings enclosed by fences. In Iceland, farms were widely separated, and nothing like villages existed.
In less prosperous areas, individual farms were well separated. In prosperous regions, farms tended to cluster into small villages or hamlets. However, the nature of these settlements varied widely from one region to another. The vast majority of Norse people lived on small farms.
