These people have three meals a day in summer, besides breakfast, and the sour Strœmming always makes a part of their dinner, as well as of the preceding refreshment. The fish, after being repeatedly squeezed, is laid between two slices of bread, and so eaten. After it they take some sour preparation of milk, without cream. Sometimes indeed they eat a bit of cheese, or bread and butter; but they never eat meat after the sour Strœmming. Their vegetable food consists of cabbage, pease, or turnips, the first being generally eaten on Sundays. Pease are eaten once a week, except when the cabbage is deficient, and then they supply its place. Turnips and salt Strœmming are generally eaten in a morning, in the following manner. When the turnips are boiled nearly enough, the fish is put to them, but not
before, lest it should be broken to pieces. To this some flour is added; and they drink sour milk after it. Their supper always consists of flummery, made of barley-meal. Before they first go out in a morning they eat either bread and butter, or bread and cheese, but they prefer the former. The mixed bread (made of corn and chaff) is their ordinary portion; good bread, made entirely of corn, they seldom or ever taste. It is reserved for visitors, or for very extraordinary occasions. Their mixed or household bread, being baked in cakes as thin as paper, is eaten by laying four or five such cakes together upon each other. They are never unprovided with ale in their cellars, to treat visitors, though their ordinary drink is table beer. In summer time they always drink Syra, (see vol. i. p. 243.)
The peasants themselves eat but very little of their own mutton, and chiefly the shoulder and brisket. The rest they sell; scarcely any is kept in the house but the
above parts, with the marrow-bones, which they break to get at the marrow. The heads and feet of sheep, goats, and hogs, are salted and dried, being, when wanted, boiled with pease, and not ill-tasted. The legs of sheep, cut off at the knee, are often boiled fresh; the fat which floats on the top being collected and preserved in a horn or pot, as very useful to grease small ropes, and wheels. The legs and feet thus boiled are afterwards thrown away, not eaten. The head and feet of a calf are usually pickled.
For fire-wood these people use birch-wood. They burn no candles in their houses. They go to smoke themselves with the Finlanders in their huts.
The hay is mown here in the same manner as in Upland, and the corn is managed in the same way as in Smoland. When the season is dry, they prefer drying the corn in heaps in the open air, as before described; but in wet weather they have recourse to sheds. The hay is spread out
till dry, and afterwards carried, without being made into cocks.
They raise as many hops as are wanted for each family, and have perhaps a few pounds over, for sale.
Their pales are high, made of pine-wood, and placed sloping.
The milk is set in the cellar, in deep tubs made of alder wood, by which they obtain a great proportion of cream, even two fingers' thick. This cream is stirred up with the milk, warmed, and then coagulated, for making cheese. Another mode is with butter-milk, to which they add a sixth part of fresh milk, that has stood one day and been skimmed. This mixture, being first warmed, is then coagulated. The cheese thus made is preferred to the former, and often eaten in preference to butter.