Making “Fladbröd”—A Cottage Interior
Page [19].
Chapter IV
On the Farm
Norway is not like England, where nearly every bit of ground is cultivated, for nothing will grow on bare rocks, and a good deal of Norway is barren land. In fact, except in the low country down in the south, the only land worth cultivating lies, as a rule, in the valleys near the fjords. There are situated all the farms, sometimes with small orchards of apples and cherries, but more often with potato plots, a little corn, and a great amount of grassland. As the mountains are always so close at hand, the fields are generally strewn with rocks and boulders, and are very uneven, so haymaking is not easy, and such a thing as a mowing-machine would be quite useless.
Every blade of grass that can be gathered has to be made into hay, otherwise the ponies and cows would starve in the winter, as they are often snowed up for weeks at a time. Haymaking is, therefore, a great business, and the amount of grass which the Norwegians contrive to scrape off their land is marvellous. At the best of times it only grows to a height of about six inches, but scythes and reaping-hooks find their way into every nook and corner, and grass that no English farmer would trouble to cut is all raked in with the greatest care. Parties go up the mountain-sides to ledges of the cliffs, and on to the tops of the mountains, to make sure that nothing is wasted, the grass being brought down to the farms to be dried.
Long wires may be seen stretching from the valleys away up, thousands of feet, to the tops of the mountains, and on these the bundles of grass are tied, to come swirling down to the farmstead. There is no time in the short Northern summer to make the hay as we make it, and there is usually so much rain that the grass would never dry at all if left lying on the ground; so long hurdles are put up in positions where they will catch the sun and the wind, and on them the grass is hung up to dry, there remaining until it has made itself into hay. Afterwards it is stored in covered barns ready for winter use.
The corn, also, is dried in a peculiar manner. As it is cut it is made up into small sheaves, a number of these being tied, ears downwards, to a pole planted upright in the ground. This makes drying rapid, and, if wet weather sets in, the rain runs off freely. A field of these wheat-stacks has a very odd appearance at a little distance, and near the woods one sees similar, though somewhat larger, stacks of branches and leaves, on which the goats are fed in the winter.