A Look into Medieval Homes

What do you think the carpets owned by rich people were made out of? It certainly wasn't synthetic fibers. I don't see any reason to believe their carpets weren't host to pests as well. The rich class were doubtlessly covered in lice and other parasites.

Or take this:

> t stretched from dawn to dusk (sixteen hours in summer and eight in winter), but, as the Bishop Pilkington has noted, work was intermittent - called to a halt for breakfast, lunch, the customary afternoon nap, and dinner. Depending on time and place, there were also midmorning and midafternoon refreshment breaks. These rest periods were the traditional rights of laborers, which they enjoyed even during peak harvest times.

This literally describes full day of work, but tries to make it sound like it is less then that. It is made to sound like it is somehow less, because there is time for lunch, dinner and a break once in two to three hours.

That 90+ minute break is a little more than a smoke break in the middle of a long shift. Similarly people didn’t have stop watches to time the other two breaks which lasted significant periods on top of the normal short breaks required for any significant physical labor.

Also in reference to “work that need to be done” we don’t include washing our clothes or shopping in labor statistics. If you define works as any productive activity then modern labor statistics also need no be dramatically increased.

While I live in Sweden (about 4 hours away from Oslo by train), I think the two countries are sufficiently similar that I can mention some of my experiences moving here from the US.

Many apartments here have a shared laundry room/area, with washer and dryer, or drying cabinet/room, and place to iron/fold.

I think just about every apartment also has a storage area, either in the basement or the attic. For us this is about 10 sq. m.

Many apartments have access to a common area that can be booked for parties or other larger events. Two rooms with kitchen is pretty common. Some have a bookable sauna, that isn't common. I've also seen places with a bookable guest rooms, which reduces the need for everyone to have a guest bedroom.

Many have some sort of green space with a play area for the kids. Some have an enclosed courtyard where residents can have their own garden. Some have a gazebo, or grill area, and one new construction here has a freestanding shared conservatory (labeled "orangery", but without any orange trees).

We don't have this, but we are a block from a small park and four blocks from a couple good play areas.

Even with these, the result is certainly not as spacious as the house you describe. Rather, I wanted highlight there might be some additional aspects of the Oslo flat which aren't reflected in your summary.

While researching what I wrote I found https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arealberegning_av_bygninger with a chart showing "Size in relation to primary area and number of people in the household - Area standards" ("Størrelse i forhold til primærareal og antall personer i husholdning - Arealnormer"). It puts 45 sq. m. for 2 people as "cramped", with the lower range for "normal" being 55 sq. m. Above 100 sq.m. for 2 people is "spacious" and above 150 sq. m. is "very spacious."

You are right too about kitchen and toilet. In the late 1800s there would have been one shared well, for the apartment building, with a shared toilet. I've read that people would have kept a pig or other animals in the courtyard. And one of the buildings here was the first worker-owned apartment building in town. The historical sign on it says it had a shared kitchen for all the residents.

The number of hours the average American spends working, traveling to or from productive locations, shopping, exercise, medical care, cleaning, doing bills/taxes/DMV etc and you quickly get 100+ hour weeks for the people working a nominal 40 hour week but often far more year round. We even sacrificed the traditional breaks by eating in our cars to be more efficient.

Meanwhile a peasant may be working long days in the summer subtracting ~4 hours of food, break, nap but they also cut back when days became shorter. Meanwhile today people just turn on the lights and keep working even chronically sacrificing sleep to work more.

PS: People are better off today in so many ways, but don’t forget not everyone was a peasant back then.