Guests did not sleep, as in Homer, in the _prodomos_, or the portico--the climate did not permit it--but in one or other hall. The hall was wainscotted; the walls were hung with shields and weapons, like the hall of Odysseus. The heads of the family usually slept in the aisles, in chambers entered through the wainscot of the hall. Such a chamber might be called _muchos_; it was private from the hall though under the same roof. It appears not improbable that some Homeric halls had sleeping places of this kind; such a _muchos_ in Iceland seems to have had windows. [Footnote: Story of Burnt _Njal_, i. 242.]
Gunnar himself, however, slept with his wife, Halegerda, in an upper chamber; his mother, who lived with him, also had a room upstairs.
In Njal's house, too, there was an upper chamber, wherein the foes of Njal threw fire. [Footnote:_Ibid_., ii. 173.] But Njal and Bergthora, his wife, when all hope was ended, went into their own bride-chamber in the separate aisle of the hall "and gave over their souls into God's hand." Under a hide they lay; and when men raised up the hide, after the fire had done its work, "they were unburnt under it. All praised God for that, and thought it was a _GREAT_ token." In this house was a weaving room for the women. [Footnote:_Ibid_, ii. 195.]
It thus appears that Icelandic houses of the heroic age, as regards structural arrangements, were practically identical with the house of Odysseus, allowing for a separate sleeping-hall, while the differences between that and other Homeric houses may be no more than the differences between various Icelandic dwellings. The parents might sleep in bedchambers off the hall or in upper chambers. Ladies might have bowers in the courtyard or might have none. The [Greek: laurae]--each passage outside the hall--yielded sleeping rooms for servants; and there were store-rooms behind the passage at the top end of the hall, as well as separate chambers for stores in the courtyard. Mr. Leaf judiciously reconstructs the Homeric house in its "public rooms," of which we hear most, while he leaves the residential portion with "details and limits probably very variable." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. pp. 586-589, with diagram based on the palace of Tiryns.]