THE LONG WINTER AND PRESERVING CIVILIZED MANNERS.

THE LONG WINTER AND PRESERVING CIVILIZED MANNERS. The location of Viking privies reminds me of a question that the members of our family asked whenever Laura Ingalls Wilder’s great book THE LONG WINTER was being read aloud. The family was trapped by heavy snow for months in the Dakota Territory in the winter of 1880-1881 as they ran out of food and also fuel. The question we each had was: why didn’t the family bring the farm animals into the house from the barn to provide heat. The only answer we could come up with was that Ma, a refined lady from the East, was unwilling to relax the line between animals and humans, even when her family was in a life threatening situation.