In the mountains, the tradition of seasonal sloth was ancient and pervasive. “Seven months of winter, five months of hell,” they said in the Alps. When the “hell” of unremitting toil was over, the human beings settled in with their cows and pigs. They lowered their metabolic rate to prevent hunger from exhausting supplies. If someone died during the seven months of winter, the corpse was stored on the roof under a blanket of snow until spring thawed the ground, allowing a grave to be dug and a priest to reach the village.
The same mass dormancy was practiced in other chilly parts. In 1900, The British Medical Journal reported that peasants of the Pskov region in northwestern Russia “adopt the economical expedient” of spending one-half of the year in sleep: “At the first fall of snow the whole family gathers round the stove, lies down, ceases to wrestle with the problems of human existence, and quietly goes to sleep. Once a day every one wakes up to eat a piece of hard bread. ... The members of the family take it in turn to watch and keep the fire alight. After six months of this reposeful existence the family wakes up, shakes itself” and “goes out to see if the grass is growing.”
I've been thinking about this ever since. Can it really be true? Medievalists, what say you? Is this a well-established fact in medieval studies, and, if so, why don't they teach us about this in Chaucer class? Is it even possible, physiologically speaking, to sleep this much after you're 17 years old? And if so, wouldn't your muscles waste away the way that those of people in nursing homes and intensive care units do?
Edited to add: I'm writing about this now because while this seemed totally impossible in November, by February--the month where days are short, cold, and gray--it's seeming more sensible by the minute.
Update 3-19-08: There's a letter to the editor about this in the NYTimes in 1906 , but it still sounds unlikely.
[Another post about human hibernation and Malcom Gladwell's take on it.]