for their coats is principally of a ftone colour, with red buttonholes,
and white metal buttons.
The women, while employed in their houfehold affairs, fre-
■quently, as in Sweden, appear only with a-petticoat and a ihift,
-with a collar.reaching to the throat, and a black faih tied round
the waiil. Their linen-is remarkably fine j and as they are
■ufually well made, this mode of drefs fets off their lhapes to
the -higheli advantage.
The common food of the peafant is milk, cheefe, dried or
falted filh, and' lometimes, but rarely, fleih or dried meat, oat-
bread called flad - brod, baked in fmall cakes about the fize
and thicknefs of -a pancake j it is ufually made twice a year.
‘I obferved a woman employed in preparing it : having
placed over the fire a round iron p'late, ihe took a handful
o f dough, and Foiled it out with a rolling-pift to the fize of the
iron plate; Ihe then placed it on the plate, and baked it on one
’fide,>then turned it on the other with a finall Hick. In this manner
ihe baked an aftoniihing number in lefs than a quarter of an
•hour; and I was informed that one woman, in one day, can
bake fufficient for the family during a whole year. The peafants
■alfo, in times of fcarcity, mix the bark o f trees, ufually of the fir-
tree, with their oatmeal; then dry this bark before the fire,
-grind it to powder, mix it with fome oatmeal, then bake it, and
eat it like bread: it is bitterilh, and affords but-little nouriih-
mient.
As a luxury, the peafants eat Jharke, or thin Jlices of meat,
8 fprinkled
fprinkled with fait, and dried in the wind; like hung beef; alfo c H A p.
a foup made like a hafty-pudding, of oatmeal or barley-meal, and . . — 1
in order to render it more palatable, they put in it a pickled
herring or falted mackerel.
The ufe of potatoes has been lately introduced, but thoie roots
¡do not grow to any fize in a country where the fummer is fo fliort.
Fabricius ftrongly recommends, in times of fcarcity, the
moffes and lichens, and particularly the lichen ijlandicus, which
yields a very nouriihing fuilenance, and is commonly ufed for
food in Iceland.
According 'to a feries of meteorological obfervations taken by
Mr. Wilfe, paftor of Sydeborg, it fnows moil in December and
in the middle of January. It rains moil in April, Odlober, and
Auguil. The cleareil weather is from the middle of June to the
middle of July, and during the whole month of March. Winds
are moil violent in the middle and latter end of April, May, and
Odlober. The ililleil feafon is in January ; from the tenth of June
to the eleventh of July, and in the middle of Auguil, a circum-
itance very profitable to the oat harveil, which of all corn is more
eafily fubjedt to call its ripe grain in windy weather. If we compare
the climate of Norway with the climate of London, March
at London is like April and the beginning of May in Norway;
and the March of Norway is our January. On account of the
frequent fpring. froils feeds ought not to be fown in gardens before
the twentieth of May; and the froils of the latter end of
Auguil are no lefs detrimental.
V o l . III. T The