TEAMS UNDER 750 MEMBERS, PLEASE .... As the Winter Solstice approached, the Vikings settled in their longhouses for the winter. This included the extended family and often the animals. "[T]he longhouse was scarcely the place for privacy. The entire extended family did everything here: eating, cooking, dressing, sleeping, work, and play, both day and night. Everyone must surely have known what everyone else was doing. Privacy did not exist; modesty must have been unknown."