S esters 347 



most primitive type of house building tu be retained 

 here, when it has long since been abandoned in the 

 plains. 



The sfeter system is so engrained in the farming of 

 Xorway that it is common for even the smaller proper- 

 ties to include a portion of mountain pasture as well as 

 of land in the plain or the valley. The larger farms 

 have generally their own steters. But many sseters 

 consist of a combination of small holdings, whose owners 

 act almost as if the property was held in common. 

 Sometimes the portions of land are individually too 

 small to maintain a single head of cattle ; and the owners 

 combine to maintain a certain number of beasts among 

 them. The life in these sseters forms probably the most 

 agreeable episode of Norwegian country life. The men 

 and women are occupied together in tending and milk- 

 ing the cattle and in cheese-making, the great industry 

 of this sajter-life. They carry down their produce into 

 the valley in enormous baskets, which are strapped upon 

 their backs, and which none but mountaineers could 

 carry up and down such paths ; and they return to the 

 sEeter at night with their baskets full of provisions. The 

 tourist who toils up these steep mountain ways, a 

 guide, maybe, carrying his knapsack for him, is put to 

 shame by quite old men, or quite young girls who trip 

 past him laden with what appear enormous burdens. 



Cattle-breeding is by no means carried on to the exclu- 

 sion of that of sheep, for which the mountain pastures 

 likewise afford great facilities. Goats are also cultivated, 

 but not in numbers at all comparable to those in 

 Switzerland. Horses, too, are bred in considerable num- 

 bers, for almost the sole means of transport inland is by 



