The center of the ger is put together first, upside down. The pillars are lashed to the roof ring.
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| Roof ring + pillars |
Some other people extend the walls and put them up around the floor. You can’t tell, but the tops of the walls lean inwardly slightly. The walls themselves are also a little bent. So the side of a ger isn’t straight but a little convex.
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| Putting up walls |
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| This is the assembled pillar-and-window set, lying in the middle of the ger and waiting to be put upright. |
The beams at the edge of each wall fit together with the edge of the next wall like a puzzle. A rope is woven through the place where they join.
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| Edges of walls with rope woven through |
Then the roof poles are put up. The laced ends rest on top of the walls, and the twine loop is looped over the beams in the walls. The tapered ends are fitted into the notches of the center ring. There’s also a rope running around the top of the ger, through the wall beams, and another one running through the wall beams near the bottom.
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| Roof poles in place |
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| Twine loop + top of the wall |
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| Roof poles fitting into the roof ring |
The ropes running the circumference of the ger are tied to either side of the doorframe. There’s also a rope running from the roof ring to the top of the door frame. Everything is getting all tied together, literally.
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| Doorframe |
Here's another rope in the roof. It must have some function, but I don’t know what.
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| Another rope |
So let me ask you: A lot of this frame is painted. The center ring is decorated, certainly, but I wonder: Why are the other pieces of wood painted? If I'm seeing this right, the wood will only be visible when you're inside the ger, making them kind of like the logs in a log cabin. Are they often painted, or is it a sealant of some kind?
ReplyDeleteYes, most of the pieces of wood are painted and will only be visible inside the ger. Actually, those pieces are painted in every ger I've been to. Some of them have traditional designs, which would have cultural significance that I don't know about yet. But sometimes the pieces are painted solid colors, without any patterns on them. My ger is one of those. In this case, simply painting them must have some function, like waterproofing them. The other trend I've seen is that 95% of the time, it's yellow or orange paint (both шар in Mongolian). At any rate, it gives you something pretty to look at when you're stuck inside all the time during the winter.
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