In his hatchet job The Lives of John Lennon, Albert Goldman claimed that Lennon had to cut out the reference to actually sleeping with the girl because the prudish record label chairman Joseph Lockwood would never have allowed it. That’s why Lennon slept in the bath.
As for the “isn’t it good”, Goldman claimed that Lennon was expressing his comfort with the changing world where women had more self-determination. A few years later, he would marry one with too much self-determination.
No arson.
John threatened to shoot his little girl for cheating and used to beat another girlfriend and kept her away from the things that she loved. Arson seems relatively tame.
Is it possible that “Norwegian wood” was just used to pad out the rhyme much like “Scrambled Eggs”(Yesterday) and they ended up liking it better than anything else they came up with?
I feel dirty quoting Albert Goldman again, but he claimed that “Norwegian Wood” was a decorating style, like “Danish Modern”.
Do you like it?, the girl asked. Isn’t it good? Norwegian Wood?
Some commentators have read a subtle pun in the title… “knowing she would.”