This is a recreation of the tunic of Lendbreen. It was found in Norway and the original is 1,700 years old and made from sheeps wool. The archeology team who worked with it wanted to get an idea of just how long it would take to make it, so they hired a team of professional textile makers to work with the old methods, using the wool from norweigan landrace breeds.
You want to know how long it took? Hold onto your butts. From the shearing of the sheep to the completition of the tunic, took seven. Hundred. And. Sixty. Hours. Yes, 760 hours. To give you an idea of how much time that is, that's over 5,000 american dollars in hourly salary alone, by minimum wage! That's 85 8-hour work days. Sure, perhaps the ancient people who made the original were faster, because they were raised in that kind of environment, but the modern craftsmen were still professionals you know? They weren't SLOW.
So don't worry about occupying your time as an ancient person. There's always something that needs to be done that can be done in low light. Sorting and cleaning wool can be done in firelight, and so can felting, knitting and spinning thread. Weaving too, if the weaver is experienced. Then there's all the other stuff. Just a few days ago I decided I wanted to ferment some fireweed tea. After the fireweed had dried for a day it needs to be rolled and crushed to ferment, and that alone took me half a night. That's just ONE kind of tea for MY personal consumption. Someone who wants to make and sell it for income would spend more time doing it, and in ancient times they would use strings they made themselves to tie it up to dry, and then store it to ferment in containers they also made themselves, and then once it's finished and baked it would be stored in yet another set of containers that they... you get the hint.
Every step of living would contain this element. Want to make candles? Sure! If you're one single person, you should be prepared to spend at least a few days to make your yearly supply of them, and that's only after you got the materials (which are expensive by the way). Want a dry place to store your firewood? Ok, but you need to build a shed for it first. Want shoes? Time to kill an animal, tan its hide, make thread out of its sinews and prepare to wear those shoes out in a few months anyways :D
Lol. I ain't saying this necessarily needs to be a stressful lifestyle, I'm saying they incorporated work into their relaxation time. I had a teacher once who was always knitting socks. Even during class. She didn't need any more socks and would unravel them once they were finished. It's just that she relaxed by creating.
Video games, novels, surfing the internet... even the mindset I have to enjoy that kind of activity would be completely foreign to an ancient.
