The case for the small window.

The first thing people say about a northern house, if they have never stayed in one, is that the windows are small. They are. In Lofoten a living-room window is often no wider than a doorway, and it sits deep in a wall half a metre thick.

A window is a decision, not a default

There is a practical reason, of course. Glass loses heat faster than anything else in a building, and a house that has to hold forty degrees of difference between inside and out cannot afford much of it. But the practical reason stopped being the whole reason a long time ago.

What a small window does is choose. It takes the entire coastline in front of you and it selects one part of it (the gap between two islands, the shoulder of a hill) and holds that steady while you eat breakfast. A glass wall gives you all of it at once, which is another way of saying it gives you none of it in particular.

February proves the point

Sit in a house with a small window in February, when the light arrives at ten and leaves at two, and the frame becomes something closer to a painting. The view does not compete with the room. You are not outdoors, indoors. You are somewhere quite specific, looking at one thing.

We have turned down houses for having too much glass. It sounds precious written down. It stops sounding precious the first winter you spend in one.