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Seter Life
Farming in the rural districts of Norway has, to a great
extent through history, been based on what nature itself
could offer without cultivation. The development of modern
agriculture in such areas has mostly appeared in the years
after the Second World War. The pastures in the woods and up
to the mountains have always been an essential support for
small Norwegian farms. Not only for use of the fields as
pastures, but also for harvesting. The grass was cut and
dried in the late summer, and stored in a small barn or in
haystacks. During the winter ' the farmers took their horses
with sledges and brought down the hay to the farm in the
valley. Not only the grass-harvesting was handled that way.
Higher up in the mountains the reindeer moss grew. This kind
of vegetation was reaped with the help of a certain type of
rake and put into bundles of a size suitable for being
transported by sleigh. The moss would then be frozen solid
and convenient to handle.
Norway has a lot of seters. Formerly almost every farm in
the rural districts had one. A seter was a kind of summer
farm, to be used from early summer to the late autumn. A
seter would usually have a group of small houses surrounded
by a little field of cultivated land, fenced in by a rustic
fence. We find a house, one or more barns, a cooking house
and a stable for the cattle. The houses were sometimes
wooden ones, often made of logs, and sometimes made of
stones found in the surroundings. In particular we find many
cattle stables made of stone.
Early summer was the time for moving from the valley to
the seter. The distance could be from 3 or 4 kilometres up
to 10 or more. The cattle were milking-cows and young
animals, in many districts, goats, too. The cattle grazed in
the surroundings. The older cows coming back for another
summer, recognized their area. One was the "leader". The
farmer put a bell on that cow in order to keep the rest of
the flock collected and follow the bell cow, but also to
make it possible for the seter maids to hear where the
cattle grazed. Every evening the cattle returned to the
seter to be milked. If they were a little lazy and did not
appear at the time, the maid used to call upon the cows with
a "kulokk", a particular kind of song. The different "lokks"
had its own melody, and a number of them are protected for
the future in the folk music collections. At night the cows
had a rope around their neck in the stable where they were
milked. The next morning they were let out for another day
of delicious pastures.
Often, in the old days the wild beasts, like the wolf and
sometimes the bear, was a threat to the cattle. Many girls
and boys were employed during the summer protecting the
livestock from these beasts of prey. Their main weapon to
avoid the enemy was to scream and make an awful noise to
frighten it.
Before the modern separator, the milk was put into low
wooden vessels. After a certain time, the cream was
collected on the surface, and taken off by a spoon. The
cream was churned into butter, which was brought down into
the valley once a week to be sold. Making cheese was another
kind of main activities on the seter.
Though seter life could be hard, it was a kind of free
life. The seter atmosphere has given inspiration to a lot of
romantic songs, poems and acts based on this kind of
life.
Mystic and superstition have also been linked to seter
life. There was a belief in fairies, the little people, that
could make trouble for the seter folk. It was told that the
invisible fairies moved into the seter houses as soon as the
farm people left for the valley in the autumn.
The Ulset farm had also its seter. Until about 1850 it
had one near Børlia, not very far from the farm. In
the 1880's the owner of Ulset built another, a bit further
in the mountains on the east side at the lake
Napsjøen. The Ulset-brothers rarely took part in
seter life at that time. The place that was to be their new
home in Oppdal, Stolen farm, had its
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