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SLEEPING ARRANGEMENTS.
63
going W.N.W., evidently down the Olkedal, which
leads to Trondhjem by a more circuitous route.
Turning back, I made inquiries at the first house, by
knocking at the window. Though nearly eleven o’clock
it was not dark, and a bed was visible close to the window;
and it rather surprised me to see three heads start up out
of this bed, two belonging to men and one to a woman.
Whether this sort of sleeping arrangement is the
custom of the country, or of the district, or was a special
peculiarity in this case, I am not able to decide; but it
does not accord with Laing’s statement relative to the
careful separation of the sleeping apartments of the
sexes in the rural districts of Norway. That they were
sleeping thus in all innocence, without any idea of
impropriety, was evident from the manner in which one of
the men reached to the window and opened it; all of
them joining very kindly in telling me the way and the
distance to the station. As the Norwegian bedstead is
an oblong wooden box, this might possibly have been a
double bed, a box with a partition down it; the two men
lying on one side and the woman oil the other, or two
boxes side by side: but I did not see any partition.
Arriving at Bjerkager station at about midnight,
after some difficulty I awakened an old woman, who led
me first to an air-tight room, where several men were
sleeping in a frightful atmosphere; then to another,
where she aroused a young woman, who prepared my
bed, and gave me some supper of bread and butter,
milk, and pancakes. In most places people would be
sulky and ill-tempered at being roused at such unseason-
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