Our breakfast of “flödsgröd” was prepared by the woman and ready at eight o’clock. For the information of our readers, we will describe how it is made. Two quarts and a half of beautiful cream were boiled by the sœter woman in an iron pot, to which we added some of our barley meal carried from Elvsœter. This was mixed together with the gröd-stick, and carried down to our tent. The flödsgröd was quite sufficient for the breakfast of five persons, and is a dish highly prized by the Norwegians, being eaten without the addition of anything else. It is very rich; the butter from the cream floating about at the top in a melted state.
The two quarts and a half of cream cost us one mark twelve skillings, and we gave the woman four skillings, which Ole suggested as quite sufficient. All the party excepting perhaps Ole, preferred the ordinary gröd with milk.
[Illustration: UTLADAL STÖL, MUMPLY VALLEY.]
The woman was a thick-set strong young person who lived alone at the sœter with her little boy. She had plenty of occupation; seventeen cows to milk every day, besides taking care of seventeen goats and twenty sheep.
The Utladal Stöl was built with loose granite stones, earth, and sods, forming one long low building, divided interiorly into three compartments, one opening into the other across the ground floor. They had hardened mud floors. The second room contained a fire hearth and chimney and bed, and was lighted with one small window which did not open; the compartment was used as a dairy. There were three ventilators or holes in the roof, which, by the aid of a long stick attached to a square piece of board, could be lifted or closed at pleasure. The Utladal Stöl was roofed partly with turf and partly with flat stones. In the Bergen Stift we were told that the sœters are called “stöls.” The Utladal Stöl was much like the dwelling-houses which were often met with formerly in the wild parts of Carnarvonshire and other counties in North Wales. In Norway the stöls are not used as dwellings like similar buildings were in former times in Wales. They are only occupied for a short period of the year in summer. Two guns, for shooting reindeer, hung from the roof of one of the rooms.