I went back to the old photograph of the farmlet from before the renovation with upstairs addition, just to see if I could figure out anything more about the windows. Here’s the best close-up I could get of the full house:
Unfortunately, the kitchen window is obscured by the tree, but you can definitely see not only the east-facing living room window (which is much narrower than the window that’s there now), but also, if you look very closely, a window on the north wall that must have been boarded up:
People, this is HUGE! How could I have missed this before? Not only does it tell me there once was a window there. It also gives me the best clue yet for what the original windows for the whole first floor might have looked like. Sadly, the photo is so blurry I can’t be completely sure, but it really does look like one of two or maybe three styles.
It might be the “empire” style I’ve written about before. Or it might be what is called a “krysspostvindu” (cross post window), where the two upper squares each open independently and are separated by a “cross” that divides the window opening vertically in the middle and horizontally two-thirds of the way up. I feel like maybe you can just make out the “cross” as a darker shadow in the north window, but I can’t see it at all in the east window, which doesn’t seem to have any panes in the two panels.
Anyway, now I’m totally confused and desperate for more evidence. I don’t think I’ll be able to make it up to the farmlet until the first week of October (the traditional Norwegian “potato vacation”), but obviously I’m going to have to start tearing out whatever is covering up that window as soon as I get there!
Renovation Tangent 