Ah!
Exactly what I thought about!
In my opinion the Jerven bag is sold till today because mainly hunters sit in warm clothing for a few hours in it, breathing out of the bag, perhaps just use it as a poncho-blanket with open parts during the use, and drive home after some hours and dry it out.
The poncho liner reduces condensation, because the temperature difference between inside and outside the fabric becomes lower with the liner, and - yes- the liner soaks up the condensation water.
The Snugpack Special Forces sleeping bag system works like that:
Soldier
in Ulfrotte Woolpower or more clothing
in Winter sleeping bag
in summer sleeping bag
in breathing bivvy bag.
usually the bivvy bag fabric transports the moisture outside. But should that not work perfectly, because perhaps the soldier breathes in the bivvy and sleeping bag during a part of the night, the outer summer sleeping bag sucks up the condensation water.
That happens too, should the condensation point come with falling outer temperatures inside the outer sleeping bag.
Mountaineers use VBL liners (bin bag liners) around the man in clothing. He becomes whet, the sleeping bag stays absolutely dry. No condensation inside the down filling!
If the VBL liner isn't used, with falling temperatures water condensates more and more inside the system:
At first outside the bivvy, than inside, (you can shake away the ice in the morning), than inside the outer areas of the sleeping bag.
In the Snugpack SF System I can pull inner and outer bag in this point from each other to dry the space in between the bags, the outer part of the inner sleeping bag and the whole thinner outer sleeping bag and the bivvy bag seperatly.
That is a modern System.
The Järven bag is an old System, which works nearly like this. But the fabric of the poncho doesn't transport moisture. Here you get always when you close it the same results like only in very cold weather in the Snugpack SF System.
In the eighties the western German soldier got a sleeping bag with a water tight rubber over garment. In the beginning it was fixed, in the end separate, to dry out the sleeping bag faster.
The soldiers became whet from inside every night with condensation water. Better and less than rain water, should it rain. US Poncho Concept and all old NATO Tarp-Bivvy-Ponchos from water tight rubberised fabric used the same system, with liners or sleeping bags or both or clothing inside as insulation.
The guis became whet, till Goretex was created, if they didn't sleep in their tents.
The Only other option in this time: Rubber poncho under you, cotton tent sheet or US cotton bivvy bag over you. That worked well till it rained to much.
But the armies hadn't really tent sheets in the right sizes.
German scouts had very large tent sheets which made a very good and nearly water tight cotton bivvy bag. We payed attention that they where hanging over the poncho ground sheets, so that water couldn't float on the poncho and under us. And we had to avoid lakes on us, for that the cotton fabric wasn't water proof enough.That worked very well.
Because we construct lavvus with that sheets, where we can light an open fire inside, the system is still in use.
-- like the Jerven bag!
German boy scouts love a system from the twenties of the last century. Norwegians love a system from the eighties, created by the US Army in the seventies.
Why not??? It works!
For a good nights sleep on solo camping tours modern Systems like the Snugpack special Forces Sleeping bag System or Hilleberg survival Bivanorak are the better and especially lighter options!
In the cotton-tent-sheet-bivvy I slept very well too, but it was relatively heavy. Only an option today, if I have the four sheets together with my friends, to construct the fire heated lavvu!
(See for the tent the video "Kohtenaufbau auf Zeit")
That's what I think currently about it.
In the beginning of this thread stands a link to a sold out cheaper copy of the Järven bag made from breathing fabrik!
That would be a newer system. But the Norwegian hunter doesn't need a newer system. And so they sell the old one with success.
For short intermissions or an evening while hunting that surely works fine.
And yes: How I wrote in the beginning, I slept round about hundred times in a rubber poncho bivvy bag and got always a whet sleeping bag.
I knew it and did it always once more and once more, if I was on a way without cotton tent sheet, to save the weight.
If you are used to harder weather, if you run around in the snow in Bavarian leather shorts, if you are used to swim in incredibly cold water like Scandinavians do it all over the year, or usually hopp out of the Sauna nacked in the snow, it's no problem to sleep in a rubber bivvy bag. The complete german army did it for may be 20 years, nearly every german man did it!
In the fifties in german youth hostels in some Bavarian forests the cold water tab was reserved for the girls, the boys washed themselves in the snow. On our hikes in spring and autumn we didn't visit heated swimming halls, we jumped in ice cold water, even in the nineties, and better german boy scout groups do it till today.
Yes, uncomfortable. But somehow funny too! Why not!
Germanic tribes aren't made from sugar!
And so can survive a rubberised bivvy poncho in Norway.
In the morning they light a fire and dry it out and it's fine!