Near the Top of the World: Stories of Norway, Sweden & Denmark

by Nelle E. Moore

And Morning Pride,

And Sunny Side;—

Come, children dear,

For night draws near,

Come, children.”

Dotted here and there far up in the mountains stand lonely little huts. For months during the year, the roofs of those huts are covered with snow and no smoke comes from the chimneys. But as soon as the winter snows are gone and the tender green grass covers the mountain slopes, the girls take the cattle to the mountains to feed on the fresh grass. Those girls will live in the lonely huts until the snows of the next winter begin to fall on the mountains. In Norway the people call a farmer’s mountain pasture his saeter (say ter).

LONELY LITTLE HUTS IN THE MOUNTAINS

Sometime in June many girls start on the journey to a saeter. The girls look forward to that day for weeks even though they will be very lonely up in the mountains. Anne and Hulda are sisters who go to a saeter each summer. Anne is only fourteen years of age and Hulda is seventeen. Sigrid, who is about the same age as Hulda, and Martha, who is much older, live on a farm not far from the farm where Anne and Hulda live. Anne, Hulda, Sigrid, and Martha take their cows to the same saeter. So the four girls live together for three months each summer.

One summer, Anne, Hulda, Sigrid, and Martha started for the saeter on June 25. They live in a part of Norway that is far from a fjord or a railroad, so they had to travel on foot. They did not go alone, for there was too much to take to the saeter. Their older brothers went with them. The girls dressed in heavy brown khaki suits and high-topped shoes, walked ahead with the cows, the sheep, and the goats. The boys came behind them with horses loaded with food, churns, milk cans, bedding, and cooking vessels. At first they traveled along a main road and walking was easy. Only a few miles from their homes, they stopped for a week at a house near the road. The cows ate the grass off the mountain slopes near the house, and the boys planted potatoes on a patch on the mountainside which was level enough that crops would not be washed away.