In the early 1950s, the Swedish Home Research Institute dispatched a team of researchers to Norway to observe how middle-aged bachelors in a remote village behave in their kitchens. The bachelors' movements were to be observed, tracked and noted in minute detail. This study followed an earlier one in which the patterns of Swedish housewives had undergone the same scrutiny. Apparently, the average Swedish housewife covered a distance equal to that between Stockholm and Congo in one year, just to prepare three meals a day.
The Swedes were curious as to how Norwegian bachelors fared. The team of researchers were required to park their cars and standard-issue miniscule trailers outside the subjects' houses, install high chairs (like the ones for tennis court umpires) in the corner of their kitchens, observe and take notes. The researcher was to take off his shoes upon entering the house (for reasons never explained), and was not allowed to interact with the subject in any way. At night, they left to sleep in the trailers, and in the morning were back in the chairs.
Call me weird, but it strikes me that a job like this could possibly trigger insanity, murder or both. In fact, it's the kind of setting horror film directors could have a field day with: a dismal Norwegian winter, two single men stuck inside the kitchen, silently eyeing each other. Now then, where's that ax?
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