I have had bouts of insomnia most of my life. While I used to get anxious about it, I adopted a more “go flow” kind of attitude in recent years. But my earlier struggles made me wonder what the sleeping habits of medieval times were like.
I have had bouts of insomnia most of my life. While I used to get anxious about it, I adopted a more “go flow” kind of attitude in recent years. But my earlier struggles made me wonder what the sleeping habits of medieval times were like.
In my research, I stumbled across the practice of biphasic sleep. Apparently, this is when a person adopts two main sleeping cycles instead of the single session we accept as the norm. Not being able to sleep for a full eight hours used to distress me a lot, and I somehow felt that I was doing my body and mind a great disservice, which only added to my pattern of stress related insomnia. But I learned that monophasic sleep only became popular in the industrial age when artificial lighting was introduced.
Medieval folk typically went to bed between 9 pm and 10 pm for a few hours and then started wandering around their homes after midnight. Most medieval homes had poor or non-existent insulation making a hearth with a fire an essential part of keeping warm. But the heating was not consistent, and this meant that every room would need a fire. Simply walking from one room to another often resulted in meeting a nasty, icy draft. By midnight, a typical medieval warming fire would have died down to embers. If you lived in this era, you would need to pull back the heavy insulating curtains around your four-poster bed to get to your chamberpot. Then you would tiptoe to the hearth, with a heavy shawl or cloak draped over your shoulders to add extra firewood.
If you could not afford a hearth in every room or heavy curtains, you would have to resort to the medieval family sleeping plan. There was a specific layout for this plan. The eldest female child would sleep against the wall, followed by the second oldest and so on. With our family structure, I would position my two daughters to one side, then I would be next in line, with my husband next to me with our son on the other side of his father. If we had a house guest, the guest would lie down next to my son with another pattern if we had more than one guest.
A wealthy medieval family who had a feather mattress, but for less affluent families, some straw or rags would suffice. Throw in a few lice and some bedbugs and fleas and you could have an authentic mediaeval slumber party. King Solomon even mentioned this quest for warmth in the Ecclesiastes chapter 4, the Christian bible; ”Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone?”
As an early riser, I can imagine I would have joined many medieval people in the practice of having a snack when I got up. It makes perfect sense to me, as I find in winter that nothing warms up my toes quite like having my evening meal. But in a medieval winter, I would need to climb over all the family members to make my way to the kitchen. I am feeling cold just thinking about it. It seems to be a pretty good reason to stay in bed for the full monophasic seven to eight hours cycle. Sleeping in cycles may seem odd, but when we look at infants, we find that they have a polyphasic sleeping pattern where they sleep and wake up several times a day. This means that at some point, our DNA finds changes in sleeping patterns helpful.
Many of my readers know I spent the first few years of my writing career working from 03H00 to 07H00 every morning. But I did not mention that I would often take a 10 to 15 minute power nap during the day. To my family, it seemed I had barely gotten into bed, and then I was up again. This used to trouble my eldest daughter, who wondered if this was even classified as a proper rest. But I discovered that a nap of 15 minutes has been shown to reduce sleepiness and cause cognitive improvements. This does not mean that you should not get your seven hours of sleep a night. Rather, it means that you should get a sufficient combined number of hours of sleep.
As a medieval fantasy writer, I must consider what the sleeping patterns for my dragons would have been. With no medieval scholars taking the time to chronicle the sleeping patterns of medieval dragons, I turned towards research on lizards. I found they possess some metabolic commonalities with dragons. In a study of the bearded dragon, scholars found they have distinctive sleep rhythms which some scholars believe dinosaurs also had.
What complicates my story is that my dragons have a telepathic connection with their dragon whisperers. I wonder if the sleeping patterns of the dragons in my books have influenced Nadine, or any of the other whisperers? That may complicate things. I may need to revise The Dragon Whisperer Field Guide, which is a free supplementary guide for my series on Amazon. If you have read any of my Chronicles of Nadine series, you may find this short and simple guide to dragon culture helpful. I wrote a very brief reference to help you better understand the four species of dragons I created.
Should I introduce their sleeping patterns? And if so, how would those cycles affect the stress levels of my whisperers? With all this high-level hypothesizing; I think it is about time for my nap.
Other Medieval Articles

Medieval Orthopedics
Hippocrates is the first person credited with having the belief that diseases occurred naturally,

Empathy, Hills and Vinegar
One old use for vinegar Hippocrates and his contemporaries favoured included oxymel, which was a remedy for persistent coughs. They made this ancient medicine of honey and vinegar.

Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head
If you know of someone who is suffering with mental health issues, reach out to them and also to organisations who can help. Too often, people live in silent shame and don’t get the help they need.
Dragon Mugs
If you love dragons, then these Dragon coffee mugs are for you. Muquin is a Silver Wing Dragon from the Chronicles of Nadine epic Fantasy Series.
Books
Have a look at Kim’s books in the series.
Kim Vermaak is a South African born author, speaker, trainer and bookstore owner who has been an entrepreneur for over 20 years and in that time; she has helped hundreds of authors, brand managers and entrepreneurs build their brands. Kim’s super power is using the power of what many see as crushing events and using them to transform not only herself but the hearts and minds of others.
She was a winner of a Regional business award, a recipient of the Panache Woman of Wonder Award and has been featured in publications such as Cosmopolitan and Destiny Magazine and served as the vice chair for the Johannesburg Business Women’s Association.
Kim’s passion for bringing wisdom back into the art of storytelling touched the hearts of her medieval fantasy series but she also has a love for teaching authors to create strong foundations for building book-preneur businesses that help them turn their dreams of being an author into a reality. You can connect with Kim via her website, www.writelearnandearn.co.za or www.kimvermaak.com or via LinkedIn.
