Shieling
A summer hill pasture with a simple hut, used by herders in Scotland and Scandinavia.
Also: sheiling, seter, sæter, fäbod
A shieling was a summer grazing ground in the hills of Scotland and northern England, with rough huts where families, often the women and young people, stayed with the cattle and made butter and cheese. The practice largely ended in Scotland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, though ruins and place names remain. In Norway the equivalent is the seter or sæter, and in Sweden the fäbod, and these summer farms are still kept in some valleys. Scandinavian herders called their cattle home across the hills with kulning, a high, carrying song. Shieling life is remembered in Gaelic songs and poetry.