When I arrived in Norway for the first time in the summer of 2023 and unpacked the sleeping kit that came with my camper, I noticed that it was only comprised of a duvet, a duvet cover, and a bottom sheet. I thought perhaps they had forgotten to pack the top sheet; they didn’t.

The next spring, when I arrived at my Airbnb for a three-month stay in Bergen, my bedding set-up was identical: bottom sheet + duvet, nothing else.

On both occasions, I quickly took to the simplicity of this bed setup. Want to make your bed? Just arrange the duvet. Feet hot in the night? Just slip them a bit to the left or right. No bulky blankets that slowly work their way to one side of the bed or the other after a week of sleep. No sheet pushed to the button that you have to find and pull up before bed. I was sold.

But what I did not know at the time was that this simplicity would even be taken a step further. You see, when you sleep in the same bed with someone else, you don’t even have to share a king or queen duvet; no, you retain your own single duvet. The mattress and bottom sheet are shared, but nothing else. Imagine this. No fighting over the amount of covers, or having them twisted and pulled off of you. Complete autonomy.

And in truth, it is not just Norway, as far as I can tell; it is all of Northern Europe, and apparently a lot of Europe, including Ukraine.

When we arrived in Portugal and checked into our first guesthouse, I thought nothing of the American-style bed with a top sheet and several thin blankets piled on top, all tucked tightly into the mattress. Serhii, however, was baffled. He had literally never seen this before. Okay, probably he had in movies, but it wasn’t registering. He pulled back the covers and said, “What IS this?!” I assured him that this is how they do beds in the US as well. Pulling back one cover at a time, he was clearly overwhelmed by the complexity. He got into bed and immediately felt claustrophobic in the tight covers, and then asked how his feet were supposed to get free in the night. I dutifully pulled hard on the bottom half of the bed to release the prison of stifling covers. A sad compromise to the single, personal duvet style of sleep we were now both accustomed to. I had to agree, and I knew that I could never go back.