That means the name of the farm where we stopped, and we made it our
headquarters for several days.
"Saeter" means "summer farm." The Norwegian farmers are mostly dairy
and cattle farmers, and in the summer they take their herds up on to
the high ground for the grazing, and bring them back into the lower
and warmer valleys in winter.
Our farmer at Jasjvold was named Slackman; and he was a slack man to
look at--very wild and unkempt, with a tousled head of hair, and a
rough beard; clothed in a blue jumper, and breeches and rough
stockings, and carrying a big knife in his belt, he looked as if he
could and would willingly slit your throat while you were asleep; but
on Sundays he was a very different character.
[Illustration: THE JASJVOLD SAETER.]
Even away up here in the mountains, far away from any neighbours, he
did not forget to keep the Sabbath, and he appeared very clean and
smart, neatly dressed, with white collar and tie, hair and beard
trimmed, and altogether so different that at first glance I did not
recognise him on Sunday morning.
But, in spite of his wild week-day appearance, he was a most cheery,
kind-hearted man, always anxious to do good turns for us, and to help
us in every way. In the evenings he would come and sit with us, eager
to teach us Norwegian, and equally anxious himself to learn English.
So we got along splendidly together.
The saeter is a group of farm buildings; each one is a separate
single-storied log house. There is the farmer's house, the house for
guests (in which we lived), the men's house, the dairy, the bakehouse,
and the "staboor," which is a kind of hayloft, stable, and manure shed
all in one. Being built on the side of a hill, it has three storeys on
one side, and only one or two on the uphill side.
The hay is put into the top storey, and can be dropped down through a
trapdoor into the stable, which is on the second floor. Then the
stable is cleaned out through trapdoors, which let all the dirt fall
into the lower storey, from which it can be carted away to manure the
fields.
A curious thing about most of the Norwegian farms is that there are no
muddy cart tracks to be seen, the grass is green right up to the
doors. Then there are no chickens about the place, as a rule; nor are
there beehives, nor any garden. The carts are very small and low,
sometimes on wheels, sometimes on runners, as sledges. The harness is
very light, and yet strong; the driver walks behind the cart and
drives the horse with a long pair of rope reins.
[Illustration: THE CARTS ARE SMALL AND LOW.]
Our house in the saeter was, like all the others, a single-storied log
house, with a roof of planks covered with birchbark, over which is
spread a thick layer of earth, which soon becomes grass-grown, so that
it looks as if the roof were made of turf.
There were three or four rooms in the house, nice, clean rooms, with
comfortable beds, and a great big open fire hearth in the corner, in
which you light up your log fire whenever you like to have it--and we
liked it pretty nearly always, for at this height, nearly 4000 feet,
close to snow-clad mountains, the evenings and early mornings were
very cold.
On our door was a big lock, and a lock in this country is not boxed up
inside iron casing but is left open to view, so that you can see how
it works, and get your fingers pinched in it if you like to be
careless.
The farmer's wife, a kind, cheery, clean, motherly woman, was always
cooking up good things for us, and feeding us to such an extent that
if we had stopped there much longer we should have grown too fat to
carry out our expedition.
She didn't understand a word of English, but she used to stop her work
every now and then to come and hear us having our Norwegian lessons,
and she used simply to howl with laughing at our attempts to pronounce
the words the right way.
The food she used to give us is much the same as you get everywhere in
Norway. For breakfast, which is generally about nine or ten o'clock
(we persuaded her to give it to us much earlier), you have a cup of
coffee and two or three glasses of milk, home-made bread, and a kind
of thin oatmeal cake, butter, and goats'-milk cheese.
[Illustration: THE LOCK ON OUR DOOR.]
Dinner is usually about three in the afternoon, but we never had any,
as we were out all day, and took bread and coffee with us. Supper, at
nine o'clock, was much the same as breakfast, with the addition of
trout, or soup, and stewed fruit and cream, again with milk to drink.
There was one girl, who waited on us and did all the work of the
house. I never saw any servant do half as much as she did, and yet she
was always neat and clean and smiling.
She chopped our firewood, made our beds, greased our boots, waited at
table, scrubbed the floors, tables, and chairs every day. You never
saw a place so clean, If I were sitting at a table writing when she
was on the scrub, I was politely requested to lift my feet up while
she did the floor beneath them!
Then there was a boy at the saeter, who, though he could not speak a
word of English, was a very nice English-looking lad.
He was in charge of the pony and cart, and his two ponies were the
cheekiest, tamest things I have seen. They would follow you about like
dogs, and seemed to understand what you said to them. That was all due
to kind treatment by their young master.
This boy used to be sent off on long journeys over very rough country
in charge of the cart. Then sometimes he would milk the cows and
goats. Whenever he had any spare time he would take down his great
18-foot rod, and go fishing for trout, and generally he brought back
some good ones, too. Then he was a handy carpenter, and understood
mending a boat and sharpening tools on a grindstone. All these are
things which a Scout should be able to do, but I wonder how many of
them an ordinary boy in England can do.
Then, sharpening your tools is a very useful thing to practise for
putting an edge on to your axe or knife.
There is a saying among Sikh soldiers in India, when speaking of any
bad act, that it is "as disgraceful as having a blunt sword." A Sikh
always keeps his as sharp as a razor. It is a disgrace to him if it is
blunt.
So, too, a woodman would never be seen with a blunt axe or knife in
camp. He would never get through his work if he had them. Yet I often
see Boy Scouts go into camp with axes so blunt that they will cut
nothing, and their knives very little better. You don't know the
pleasure of handling an axe till you have used a really sharp one.
And then every Scout ought to know how to sharpen his own axe on a
grindstone. You must wet the stone first, and then get someone to turn
it, running the wheel away from you, while you lay the blade with its
back towards you, and its edge in the same direction as the wheel is
moving, and pass it gently on to the stone, doing each side of the
blade in turn a little at a time until the whole blade becomes bright,
especially at the cutting edge.
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