In the southeast corner of the province, Riften is nestled in a scattering of the orange-leafed birch and aspen trees that cover the Rift for miles. On my visits to the fall forest, I’m often welcomed by a gloomy mist enveloping the hold. Up a cobblestone road, we approach the stables. After talking to a thief posing as a city guard, we enter the gates, and lay eyes upon what’s hidden inside the stone walls.
It feels sharper, and more blocky. A strong difference to Whiterun, with its curved roofs and rounded paths. There’s a darkness to Riften, especially when you first walk in. It’s confined, blocking the sun from most angles. The leafy mulch soil, weeds bunching up against the houses, and moss and ivy covered walls lend themselves to give a sense of dampness and shadow.
We see cobbled paths, horizontal logs and planks, spaced out timber framing, and slate roof tiles. You can see here how the designers made use of an ancient architectural style I like to call: The Log Cabin I Always Dreamed Of.
With their roots primarily in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, log cabins were a strong and movable type of home. In the 1500s, a log cabin could be disassembled and reassembled elsewhere, and one could be erected by a group or family in only a few days. Usually done in forested areas where the right lumber was available, like pine and spruce trees.
You can see resemblance of the town’s tavern to this cabin at the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History, in the second story. The layout of the supports, the horizontal and vertical logs, and the little arched windows in the centre. I love it!
The structure of the Riften buildings are clearly influenced overall by the traditional Scandinavian builds rather than the North American log cabins we know, but there are still similarities. For example, the corners, and how the chunky logs cross and join together, and extend out. Sturdy boys.
Riften’s layout has a way of guiding you from the entrance towards the keep. The circular plaza catches your eye and you walk immediately in that direction. A noble could cross the city from the North gate to the jarl’s court without sparing a glance to the merchants, the poor, or the canal below. The confined, somewhat unpaved space at the beginning spilling into an open area gives me the sense that the city is telling me to stay on the beaten path and to only look at what’s ahead of me.
At the centre of the plaza, sits Riften’s water well. It definitely has that wishing well shape, but an aspect of it I noticed is its roofing matches the houses. Roofing which, at first I thought was shale or slate, but up close, appears to be wooden planks. It’s what’s called a Shake roof. A shake is a type of thicker roof shingle made from wood. It’s protective, but requires more maintenance. Wooden roofs were primarily used in Scandinavia and North America.
None of Skyrim’s wells have any function, but they’re fun to jump on.
Riften is situated on a lake, and its foundation is its canal. Once a centre of trade and commerce, the city’s fall from glory may well be due to the effects of the Great War or poor government. Or perhaps the actions of a certain Guild had more consequences than we initially believed.
The buildings here, including the keep, are only seventy or so years old, as in the book, Of Crossed Daggers, we can read about the history of the city. The town was once a thriving trade hub, but over a hundred years before the events of Skyrim, it was ruled by a greedy and oppressive jarl named Hosgunn Crossed-Daggers, and the people endured four decades of his ridiculous taxes and curfews.
“Then, in 4E 129, the people had finally had enough. With their numbers, they were able to temporarily overwhelm the city guard long enough to set Hosgunn’s Folly on fire with the greedy Jarl still within. As the fighting recommenced, the fire spread through the city unchecked. By the morning, the people had emerged victorious, but not without great cost. Most of the city was now in ruins and many had died.”
Hosgunn’s Folly was the name of the wooden castle he’d built for himself, as his subjects grew poorer and himself richer. It’s stated that Riften was rebuilt, smaller, through the next five years, and this is the town we know today.
Turning left at the plaza, and we find ourselves in front of the Temple of Mara, the goddess of love and compassion. Coming from my last article, where we looked at Whiterun, you might be able to see something interesting. We discussed the Scandinavian architectural style known as Dragestil, or “Dragon Style”, which is commonly seen in stave churches throughout Norway.
The arrangement of these churches, particularly the way the floors stack on top of each other, as seen with the Borgund Stave Church in Norway, is replicated here at the temple. There are details at the edges of the roofs, but the trees like to get in the way. The main difference lies in the eaves, (the big overhangs of the stave church’s roofs) while the temple’s only really casts shade over the doorway.
As we reach the southernmost point of Riften, we approach a walled, stone built keep. This is the jarl’s court and the Rift’s military headquarters, Mistveil Keep.
A keep is a fortified tower built within castles throughout Europe during the Middle Ages. The designs for these keeps would evolve through the centuries. Earlier buildings featured predominantly square floor plans and one solid structure, while later iterations would make use of curved and circular designs.
The architecture of Mistveil Keep is vastly different from the whole of the city. Fortified with masonry reminiscent of Castle Ward’s towerhouse in Northern Ireland, it stands taller than all the other structures to watch over Riften, and connects the barracks, court, and jail. I find the dark shade of its brickwork reminds me of the same aspects of Riften as the entrance does: the dampness and the shadow.
Maybe the traders will return, maybe the streets will brighten, and maybe the city’s luck will change. Riften is a relatively new city. The area is steeped in history, but perhaps the log cabin-inspired buildings themselves are just the foundation to Riften’s next life.
There is a hold just North from Riften, however, whose city has stood for thousands of years. That’s where we’re going next. The cold, dark root of human civilization in Tamriel — Windhelm.
Thank you for reading.
