A word to the wise:

[conuly]

The chimney was invented a lot later than you think. No, later than that. No, a bit later. Just a bit more....

Got it!

If your story is set in actual northern Europe prior to the 12th century, nobody has a chimney in their house. (Edit: But some people have primitive chimneys in workshops.) And if it's set anytime prior to, oh, Columbus and a little later, then their use is still uncommon in homes.

Which means that your character does not have a fireplace flush against her bedroom wall. If she has a bedroom, that is - and if she does, she most likely shares it (and the bed) with at least one other person.

Hallways are also uncommon in pre-Columbian Europe, and for a while after that as well. Prior to widespread use of hallways, people who had more than one room in their home just went from one room to another.

(Also, and I feel this one goes without saying, or at least ought to, if Columbus has not yet crossed the ocean blue, you can rest assured that there are no potatoes anywhere to be found in Europe.)

Comments

[sylvaine]

(Nor tomatoes!)

I didn't know this about chimneys! I suppose people just had a hole in the roof or nothing at all?

I did know that about sharing a bed. And that persists far later than people think, too, at least in less wealthy parts of the world - my father shared his a bed with his brother throughout their entire childhood.

[steorra]

*I* shared a bed with a sibling for a significant chunk of my childhood.

In Canada. In the 1980s-1990s.

I remember, when I was about 12 or 13 (after we moved to our new house and before we got a bunk bed), repeatedly waking up in the middle of the night to find that my younger sibling was taking up most of the (twin) bed and I was squished up against the wall. I'd gently push my sibling over to their half of the bed, trying not to wake them up, so I could have my share of space without them touching me as I was lying in bed.

I think maybe this happened because they didn't mind touching me in their sleep but I minded them touching me, so if they wandered into my space I'd shrink away from them until I ran out of space.

[the_siobhan]

Now I'm trying to place dates on my childhood. My family moved to Canada in 1965. I know my sister and I shared a bed until... I think I would have been 12? So '75?

I've never even thought about it. My parents came from big Irish families with over a dozen siblings, so sharing beds would have been completely normal to them.

[conuly]

*I* shared a bed with a sibling for a significant chunk of my childhood.

There was an /r/amitheasshole post a while back, the OP wanted to know if it was reasonable for his twin sisters to each get their own room while he was stuck sharing with three other siblings, one of which is MUCH younger than he is.

(And for the record, I think not - put the twins in one room, split up the boys in some reasonable way. You have the bedrooms for this, so why not?)

A ridiculous number of people in the comments asserted that it's morally wrong to have more children than bedrooms, that if you know you can't afford a house with more than X number of bedrooms, you must not have more than X number of kids.

My eyes rolled so hard. Yes, it's optimal to not have two siblings of a very different age sharing, or more than a few kids in a room, or children sharing with grandparents, or post-pubescent kids of opposite sex sharing... but all these set-ups happen worldwide and historically. And in this case it's clear it's not the sharing that's the problem, it's the incredibly disproportionate treatment of the girls vs. the boys.

[conuly]

I suppose people just had a hole in the roof or nothing at all?

Pretty much, and the fire in the center of the room so as to most evenly distribute the heat.

[jhetley]

I recall reading that some kinds of thatch roof allow smoke to seep through without a smoke hole. Never tested this theory.

[mama_kestrel]

There was a hearth; the word exists in recognizable for in Old English, Old Norse, and Old Saxon. It referred to "the part of the floor upon which the fire was built." Sometimes they were edged and lined in stone. That type is easy for archeologists to find, because the stone would crack in distinctive patterns under repeated heating and cooling.

[james]

Sugar cubes! Invented in the 1840s! Someone in the 1300s would not be feeding sugar cubes to horses!!

[jhetley]

Also no tomatoes.

[captainsblog]

The first house my wife and I bought was standard 1950s ranch, but it backed up to a 19th century farmhouse fronting on one of the few roads in the town that existed pre-WWII. For most of our time there, it was owned by two aged sisters in nursing homes who refused to agree on what to do with it. Finally, through death or court order I forget which, it was put on the market more-or-less as is. We went to an open house out of curiosity.

I remember three things about it. The giant coal stove in the kitchen; the obvious refitted indoor plumbing; and, apropos of your post, the floor plan, or rather, the lack of one. You walked from room to room and up short flights of stairs that led from a room on one level directly to the next one above it. Some of the retrofitted plumbing was in those tiny stairwells.

It eventually sold and was being restored when we moved in 1994. Now I want to see if there are any before/after pictures of it online.

[captainsblog]

#7 on this tour:



Off market since right after we moved. A professional engineer bought it and runs her practice from it.

[conuly]

Plumbing in the stairs!?

[captainsblog]

My guess is the stairwells were the only existing access points to the upper floors when they retrofitted. It was just tiny sinks wedged into corners. The privies may still have been outside for all I know.

[sylvaine]

Way late on this, but I wandered back to this post & remembered my colleagues were telling me that In Their Youth, it was apparently still quite common (in this area of Germany at least) for apartments to not have their own bathroom - you had a communal bathroom and toilet basically at half-floor height in the stairwell.

[raino]

Hahaha yeah no potatoes in middle ages. Also no rutabagas, they appeared surprisingly late. A village clise to my parents’ place claims to be the birthplace of rutabaga. They have a rutabaga festival etc.

[mama_kestrel]

No chocolate. No vanilla. No corn. No tobacco. Very different from what we think of now.

[conuly]

No peppers or potatoes, no quinoa or sunflower, no turkey, no peanuts, no squash....

[silveradept]

So much to research getting in the way of telling their story, and you are so mean to tell them about it! [/pearlclutch]

This is the sort of thing that libraries and archives are for.

[conuly]

On this note, Quest for a Maid is and remains one of the best YA historical fiction novels ever. They wear pattens! She shares a bed with two soon-to-be-inlaws and the maid! Carrots are a new crop and an amazing novelty! Nobody eats potatoes in that book.

(Also, I maintain that it's got one of the best opening sentences ever.)

[mindstalk]

Man, the book summaries are very different from what "Quest for a Maid" made me think of. Which was either an English matronly "it's so hard to find good help" or an ecchi Japanese "I want a 'maid' ".

[conuly]

No, she is a maid as in a maiden.

[mindstalk]

Yeah, I figured after hitting Goodreads. Or as in "Maid of Norway". Quest belonging to a maiden, rather than questing for a maid.

[offcntr]

It works the other way, too. I once bounced hard out of a scifi time travel novel that had domestic goats in pre-Columbian Mexico.

[mindstalk]

Clearly some other time travelers had been there first! :)

[conuly]

Could be worse. Could be horses.

[mount_oregano]

True story: Queen Isabel of Spain (the one who underwrote Columbus) was attacked by an assassin as she was sleeping. But the assassin stabbed her lifelong best friend, Beatriz de Bobadilla, who was sleeping with her. Even royalty shared beds. In fact, having read a fair amount of medieval literature, medieval people seemed to hate to be alone, so they were glad to share a room and a bed. The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there. P.S. Beatriz recovered. The would-be assassin didn't live long. Isabel could hold a grudge.

[conuly]

I'd be angry too!

[mount_oregano]

She had an army and knew how to use it. She did not, however, have a fireplace.