Setertun

Setertun, Røros.

Seven hundred metres up

The road to Setertun stops being a road about two kilometres before you arrive. Ingrid and Bjørn Aas drive the last stretch in a vehicle that has clearly given up on dignity, and they do it twice a day from June to September.

The seter – the summer mountain farm – is one of a handful still operating in the traditional way around Røros. The cows walk up in June and walk down in September, and in between they eat nothing but what grows at 700 metres.

Why the butter changes colour

In early July the butter is deep yellow. By September it has faded almost to cream. Ingrid explains this the way other people explain the weather: the flowers are gone, so the colour is gone. Carotene from the summer pasture goes into the milk and comes out in the butter.

Industrial dairies solve this by mixing milk from everywhere and adding colour. Setertun solves it by letting it happen and telling people why.

The economics of doing it the hard way

Twenty-two cows is not a viable modern dairy herd. It is viable here only because the milk becomes butter, cheese and sour cream that are sold directly, at Røros market and to a handful of restaurants that collect it themselves.

Bjørn is unsentimental about this. The traditional method survives because it produces something people will pay a fair price for. If it did not, it would already be gone, as it is in most of the valleys around them.

We are not preserving anything. We are running a farm. It just happens to be a farm that works the way farms used to.

Why it is here

• Authenticity

  A farm being run, not a museum. Bjørn is explicit that nothing is being preserved.

• Story

  Twenty-two cows that walk up in June and down in September, as they always have.

• Quality

  Butter, cheese and sour cream made the same way every summer, sold direct.

• Unique experience

  You can taste the season in the colour of the butter. Almost nowhere else shows you that.

• Local value

  Sold at Røros market and to restaurants that collect it themselves.