If TR confuses you on this, don't worry, it frankly is a bit schizo on lodges. The essays describe an 'overwhelmingly communal' people who have no word for privacy, living in large extended families produced by a kinship system that encourages brothers to live and work together, and where 'four or five generations share a common hearth' (TR 30). However, some of the boxed inserts describe a very different situation: on page 18 we have 21 dwellings for 70 initiated adults - at best 25-30 married couples! That sort of demographic would be a stretch even for our own, kin-poor, sub-nuclear, privacy-obsessed society.
(OK, I'm biased here. The essays are mine. The boxed text in question isn't).
There need not be a right or wrong answer. Bloodline families live according to both need and inclination, according to the available resources, and the contrasting needs of sociality and 'breathing space'. There is always going to be variation.
For what it's worth, my idea of a typical longhouse hearth would be the spakeman (bloodline elder) or other elder male and his wife, their surviving sons - typically three or four - their wives and children, unmarried daughters and some of head male's elderly blood relatives (brothers etc) with perhaps a few cottars who are more distant relatives. This is *at least* ten to twelve adults - as TR 27 says, between 20 and 40 individuals.
The number will vary according to the season, with most of the lodge present in Dark Season, and a good percentage moving to the upland meadows with the sheep in summer. I'd imagine that if brothers of the key generation don't get on, the lodge will eventually split, and in another generation this will become a split into two bloodlines. But since the bloodline hearth is the key unit for organising work and for holding property, it makes sense for hearths to be as large as practical.
I can't imagine many circumstances where a lodge might contain two or more hearths. It's fairly easy to build a new lodge: 'a great tree, a good god and a bloodline for a day'. Conceivably, a split hearth/byrne might become two hearths in separate parts of the building.
What reasons for smaller dwellings? The seasonal cycle of farm life will require some flexibility, with upland huts for the summer herders and hunters. Some cults are best left to themselves - Humakt, Urox, and the various Gori being the most obvious examples. I personally play that Yelmalians like to keep themselves 'pure' and somewhat apart. There will be stead dwellings for the inevitable cooling off periods required when members of a hearth disagree. By the end of Dark Season, after all those weeks cooped up in the same (large) room, even Heortlings may need to move dwellings to stop themselves rearranging a kinsman with an axe. Those preparing for initiation might dwell apart. And the pressures of the invasion - Lunar worshippers, Lunar friends, rebels and peace talkers - all may spark intractable differences even within a hearth. Generally however, TR suggests that Heortlings have little need for privacy as our society conceives it- that sex, birth, life and death are all, quite literally, laid out on the kitchen table.
John
(Frantically catching up after a week offline)
nysalor_at_... John HughesQuestlines: http://home.iprimus.com.au/pipnjim/questlines/
When the Duck laid that kiss on me last night, I swear my thighs just went up in flames! He must practice on melons or something.
Pretty in Pink.
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