The Fish can Sing by Halldór Laxness

It would drive one mad to try to tell about all the visitors who ever came to Brekkukot, and indeed such a book would burst all the printing-presses in Iceland; I intend to describe only a few of them here, not more than I can count on my fingers, and in particular those who concern my own story to some extent. And I will start by enumerating those who lived in the mid-loft.

A dilapidated, creaking stair with seven steps connected the passage with the mid-loft in our house. It was here that I and my fellow-residents lived. This mid-loft was the centre-space of the upper storey, partitioned off from the rooms on either side; we were in effect a sort of vestibule for those who lived in the east and west ends of the loft, as well as for anyone who went up or down the stair. When my grandfather did not give up his bed to a visitor, he slept in the part of the loft that faced south, but which was actually called the west end; otherwise he would lie on a pile of nets out in the store-shed, and would think nothing of it. Often our living-room was full, and people were tightly packed in at both ends of the loft; there were sleepers in the passage and sleepers in the doorway, and sometimes during the autumn trips, when we had the largest crowds, they would bed themselves down in the store-shed and the hayloft as well. But in the mid-loft slept only those who might be called the regular residents at Brekkukot. Apart from myself there were three other guests, if I can so call them, whose stay in the mid-loft was hardly brief – at least, I can remember them from as far back as I can remember myself. The four of us slept there two to a bed.