Between Midsummer and St. James's day (July 25th), the whey is collected, after the cheese is made; which, after boiling for some hours, is set by to cool. When cold, it is barrelled up for winter use. Poor
people and old women beg or buy it, a small bottle-full at a time. To one pot of sour milk they add a fourth part of Syra; and these together have the taste of what they term Filbunke, which is sour milk with the cream on, just beginning to ferment, and of which they make Servet-mjölk; (see p. [150].)
Thick milk (perhaps Mesosmör, see vol. i. p. 243,) is often kept in barrels till winter, as is the meal made of fir-bark, when both serve for winter provision.
Syra is so very sour as not to be eatable by itself. When they have no milk to dilute it with, they add an equal quantity of water to the Syra, and mix the whole with flummery, which mixture they prefer to small beer.
Butter is now and then made of goat's milk; but it is very strong, and quite as white as that made of the milk of the rein-deer.
August 18.
On islands near the shore I saw a Salix with leaves like the cultivated olive. It is a shrub three feet high, but growing in a spreading manner. Stem grey, with roundish dusky solitary buds, of a very large size, in proportion to the plant. Leaves gradually larger (upwards?), oblong-lanceolate, bluntish, on scarcely perceptible footstalks, furnished with an obtuse longitudinal rib beneath, but no veins. Their upper surface is green, sprinkled all over with minute white dots; very slightly channelled, and paler, along the nerve. (This appears to have been S. rosmarinifolia.)
August 19.
At the fair of Calix I obtained some information concerning the commerce of this country, which is very different from that of almost every place in the world besides, insomuch that I am unable to determine which party makes his market of the other.