rhyme the story of centuries. In distant Iceland, Greenland, the
Shetlands, the Faroes or the Orkneys, a Norseman could tell exactly what
might be his udall right, or right of inheritance, in the land of his
fathers.

On Nils and Thorolf, Anders, Olof, Nikolina, Karen and Lovisa, who were
all over ten years old, rested great responsibility. Mother Elle always
managed to solve her own problems and expected them to attend to theirs
without constant direction from her. She told them what there was to be
done and left them to attend to it.

All were hardy, active youngsters who took to fending for themselves as
naturally as a day-old chick takes to scratching. In ordinary seasons
the work at the saeter was heavy, for the maidens must not only follow
the herds over miles of pasture land, but make butter and cheese for the
winter from their milking. The few cows that were here now could be
tethered near by; the milk, when the children had had all they wanted,
was mostly used in soups, pudding or gröt (porridge). A net or weir
stretched across the outlet of the lake would fill with fish overnight.
The streams were full of trout. Mother Elle knew how to make fish-hooks
of bone, bows and arrows, ropes, and baskets of bark, how to weave
osiers, how to cure bruises and cuts, how to trap the wild hares,
grouse and plover and cook them over an open fire. The children found
plover's eggs and the eggs of other wild fowl. They raised pulse, leeks,
onions and turnips in a little garden patch. They gathered strawberries,
cranberries, crowberries, wild currants, black and red, the cloudberry
and the delicious arctic raspberry which tastes of pineapple. Some
stores of salt and grain were already at the saeter and the grain-fields
had been sowed, before the pestilence appeared in the valley.