Early in the spring Matti, Ingrid, and Ole, and their father and their mother move to Grotli. Sometimes the snow is still on the ground when they arrive. Then the children may think that Grotli looks more like reindeer hill. A farmer, who lives near the saeter, has a herd of tame reindeer. They wander about on the mountain. They rub the snow out of the way with their noses and eat the fresh grass and moss which they find underneath. Sometimes visitors in Norway ask, “Why must the cattle go so far away from the farm to the high pastures?” If they ask a Norwegian milkmaid, she might say, “The grass which grows on the farm must be saved for winter feed. Not enough grass grows on the farm for both summer and winter. Fresh, tender grass grows on the high mountains, so the cattle eat it in the summer. Then no grass is wasted.” But the milkmaid may not know why the saeter is _so far_ away from the farms. And, of course, it does seem strange to American girls and boys that a farmer sends his cattle to feed in high pastures miles from his farm, while in the mountains just above his own farm graze the cattle of another farmer who lives miles away. Why cannot a farmer graze his cattle on the mountains near his home? The answer to that question is a story of long, long ago in Norway. Long ago the farmers in Norway found that they must use the grass on the high mountains for summer feed. The king said, “Each farmer may have a part of the grass lands on the high mountains for his pasture. But each farmer must use only a certain amount of land and he must find a place which no other farmer has already claimed.” So each farmer hunted himself a mountain pasture. When he found a space which he liked, if it had not already been claimed, he drove stakes into the ground to mark it off. He put his name on the stakes and then the land was his. Many farmers had to take pasture lands which were far from their farms. They could find no other free land. Years and years have passed since the days when a farmer drove stakes and marked off his pasture land. The farms have passed to other owners. Perhaps now the great-great-great-grandsons of some of the farmers live on the farms, or some farms may have been sold to other families. But the new owners of the farms are also owners of the same saeters that the old farmers staked off for the farm. And that is why many a farmer today takes his cattle to a saeter far from his home. On the Flat Farm Lands of Denmark One day late in July, Christian was so excited he could hardly eat his dinner. School had closed for the summer vacation. The next morning Christian, who was only nine years old, was going to a farm to stay four whole weeks. In fact he would stay on the farm until time for school to open again in August.