During Bjørnson’s time Aulestad got a smoking room: the pigsty! Anyone wishing to enjoy a pipe or a cigar had to go there. But Alexander Kielland was the exception. “Rather suffer his smoke, than be without his company” Bjørnson said and let Kielland smoke in the living room.
The French painter Theophile-Alexandre Steinlen, who visited during the summer of 1901, painted the grandchildren’s cats on the mantelpiece. His and Erik Werenskiold’s pallets are also hanging there.