Happy Times in Norway

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HANS CAME STORMING IN TO MOTHER WAVING JANNA S sky-blue knitting. "Oh, mother, pick up these stitches that have been dropped. I pulled out one ofJanna's needles . . . and, mother, may we borrow some thumbtacks!5 " "Thumbtacks? Are you mad?" asked Mother, casting her eye over the damage to Janna's sweater. "I have no thumbtacks up here." "Oh, yes, mother, just look and see. Maybe you have some among your writing things?" And sure enough, miraculous as it seemed, in a tin box where Mother kept such things as tape and rubber bands, she found a package of thumbtacks. "Oh, mother, you just ought to see the playhouse Janna and I are making. Come and see." Mother sensed that she would not have any peace for 173 4 HAPPY TIMES IN NORWAY working this morning. She might just as well go and seewhat the children were doing. They were out by the woodpile and the playhouse was, to put it plainly, the little old house from behind the barn. Sigurd Hole had built a new one, more comfortable and roomy,while he wasbuilding on his saeter the year before. The old one stood amid piles of kitchen stovewood and chunks for the fire under the cheese kettle. Pine roots and gnarled trunks of white-barked dwarf birch lay waiting to be chopped into firewood and this fate also certainly awaited the old outhouse. The door had already disappeared. But now Janna and Hans were elevating it to the rank of a fine house. Boards were laid on the seat with the unambiguous holes in it, and Janna had spread some paper napkins over them. She had a whole cigar box full of napkins which she had saved from Christmas-tree parties at school and activities at the mission house. She had a thick pack of pretty Christmas cards too and these were to be put up on the wall by means of thumbtacks. Hans ran bringing in "dishes" he had found—parts of alovely blue glass sugar bowl and fragments of flowered cups and plates. "I have washed them in the creek, mother. We found them on the rubbish heap, but they are absolutely clean now." 174 S U M M E R VACATION The youngsters had rolled two chunks of tree stump into the "room" and there was no space left for anything else. "Vazrsogod, mother. Do sit down. There, isn't that ni-i-ce? You shall be invited to our party when Hanna is through with the cheese. She has promised to give us some whey and cookies and coffee and sugar lumps. And Little Mari and Joda are kind of like our children , you see." Johanne had more than enough todo.It wasshe who washed the floors and dusted up at the winter house and down in the saeter house. And afterward she stood and stirred the cheese in the big cheese kettle with a large wooden ladle that was longer than herself, her narrow back swaying from the hips and her shoulders circling and circling. She worked steadily, like an experienced dairymaid. Goat's-milk cheese is actually not cheese at all—or so the experts say. For when the milk has been warmed so that the rennet can be added, and the milk begins to separate, the casein, or the stuff from which cheese is made, is fished out of the kettle and set aside. This mass, which people here in the valley call kjuke, is made into several different kinds of white cheese, but it also tastes good eaten fresh with rich milk and sugar and cinnamon on it for dessert. The whey left in the '75 HAPPY TIMES IN NORWAY cheese kettle is allowed to stand and cook by the hour until it thickens and turns a reddish brown. All the time someone has to stir it, scraping the bottom of the kettle. It pays to be especially careful toward the end, when the cream is added, so that the mixture does not burn. By afternoon there is nothing left in the big kettle that was brimful of milk that morning but a clump of reddish-brown dough in the bottom. It is chiefly lactose, or milk sugar, and it is called myse or myssu. Hanna would lift this dough up into a wooden bowl and when it had cooled sufficiently, she would work it with a large...