Undertstanding sleeping on 板 in the 雪女 story

Question

船頭小屋には火もなく、畳二まいほどの板が敷いてあっただけでした。二人はその板の上に横になり、いつの間にか眠ってしまいました。
There wasn't even a fire in the boatman's hut. Only 2-tatami-wide planks had been laid out. The two of them laid down on these planks and were asleep before they knew it.

I don't quite understand this sentence. I see two options:

1) These planks are something designed for sleeping on (maybe I'm missing a cultural reference). In which case, I'm happy with the use of 敷く.

2) These planks constitute the floor of the hut and are not specially designed for sleeping on. In this case I find 敷いてあった confusing. The translation of "to lay out" doesn't seem like a word that would be used other than when talking about building the hut. I feel that adding てある reinforces my thought that this is something that was done after the hut was built.

In summary, I would pick option 1) but I wonder if 板 is something more than just a plank of wood.

Answer 1

敷く means placing or spreading any flat object including tatami, carpet, futon, paper, mat, cloth, napkin, and so on. We do not say ベッドを敷く because it's not a flat object. Since an 板 is a flat object, 敷く is a natural verb choice here regardless of whether it's a piece of furniture or permanent flooring. For example 畳を敷いた部屋 can possibly refer to both a Japanese-style tatami room and a western-style room with a tatami on a carpet.

Nevertheless, you seem to be reading a simplified version of 雪女. This version of 雪女 is presumably the original, and it says 板敷【いたじき】, which means "wooden floor". Traditional Japanese houses looked like this, so it's not strange if only a part of the ground of this hut was covered by 板. In addition, 二畳 is a little too big as a bed.

Answer 2

I think the hut had no floor, some transients layed the coule of planks over bare ground so they were able to sit on or lay down on the planks.

I put a sample picture link from google map.

Aso Tsukimigoya doesn't have floor,a blue sheet is "敷かれている".