I live in Finland and half of the year it's dark and cold. I would imagine that people were confined in their homes for most of the winter with their (extended) family, servants, hirdmen and whatnot.
How would people deal with the need for privacy when they wanted to make love, have private conversations and so on? Was it not thought necessary? Did people think differently about hiding their most intimate actions from, say, their children?
In most cases, they didn’t. People have different standards of privacy in different times and places. In many places throughout history (and even today), people would have sex in full view of their other family members. While sex in the medieval west was not the most public activity, it wasn’t an extremely private or intimate one like it is typically seen today.
Obligatory “more can always be said”, but here’s two previous answers that give a much more detailed explanation about the relatively public nature of sex in some societies, and possible reasons why that changed.
Response by u/vertexoflife: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/24uikm/when_did_people_start_having_sex_in_private_or_is/
Response by the appropriately named u/AnnalsPornographie: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4qkr04/what_was_sex_like_when_most_people_lived_in_1/
For a slightly different answer than the ones linked elsewhere, here is /u/sunagainstgold talking about how there were very much efforts at privacy and intimacy in the Middle Ages Here
Wow! This is fascinating! Thank you for all eho took the time to answer!