English

A seter in Gudbrandsdal, Norway, situated above the tree line in the mountains and used for summer pasture.

Noun

seter ‎(plural seters)

1. A summer pasture with barns, especially one in the mountains of Scandinavia used for milk and cheese manufacture, to which a farmer takes livestock as part of transhumance.
   • 1964, Reidar Christiansen, Folktales of Norway, page 114:

     Every summer, a long long time ago, they went up to the seter with the cows from Melbustad, in Hadeland.

   • 1968, Axel Christian Zetlitz Sømme, A geography of Norden: Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, page 248:

     In Østlandet, on the contrary, the high mountain plateau, the gentle slopes and the grouping of seters in clusters permit the building of roads and therefore a modernized use of the seters.

   • 2002, Brian Roberts, Landscapes of Settlement: Prehistory to the Present, page 131:

     For example, twelfth- and thirteenth-century documents from the north of England mention place-names incorporating the term 'shield' or 'shiel', a 'shieling' being an area of summer pasture corresponding to the seters of Sweden.

Etymology 2

Noun

seter ‎(plural seters)

1. A natural terrace in solid rock, formed by waves, that marks the former position of a shoreline.

• 1906, Eduard Suess, The Face of the Earth (Das Antlitz der Erde), page 479:

  The lowest important terrace, known as Sherbrooke-street terrace, lies at a height of 36-6 meters in the Leda clay; the next, Waterwork terrace, at a height of 67 meters, is excavated in the lower Silurian limestone, and I am not sure whether it should not be regarded as a seter.

• 2003, The Large Wavelength Deformations of the Lithosphere (ISBN 0813711967), page 227

  As far as Suess could see from the existing maps and from the aneroid that he had wisely brought with him, the seters are also horizontal. Nowhere did Suess see any marine fossils on the seters, and neither had anybody else before him.

Etymology 3

Noun

seter ‎(plural seters)

1. A silk scarf or thin pice of cotton cloth used to consecrate a domestic animal to a deity in Mongolia.
   • 2011, Natasha Fijn, Living with Herds: Human-Animal Coexistence in Mongolia, ISBN 1139497138, page 232:

     Similar to the seter, it is forbidden to touch the tree, or to chop the tree down for firewood, or timber. It is clear that the sacred tree and the seter cow have powers, beyond that of an ordinary cow or tree, which assist in protecting the herding family and their herd of animals from harm.

   • 2011, Morten Axel Pedersen, Not Quite Shamans: Spirit Worlds and Political Lives in Northern Mongolia, ISBN 0801461413, page 154:

     As I entered her house early on the afternoon before the ritual, Nadmid Udgan was busy making protective amulets (seter, lusyn örgöl) on her manual sewing machine.

   • 2013, Caroline Humphrey & ‎Hurelbaatar Ujeed, A Monastery in Time: The Making of Mongolian Buddhism, ISBN 022603206X, page 238:

     So our man [Tulga] made a great show of bringing his black stallion, tied the seter, and let the horse go free.

   • 2013, John P. Hoffmann, Understanding Religious Ritual, ISBN 1136889922:

     In both traditions, Shamanism and Buddhism, a rite of entrusting and consecrating a domestic animal to a deity involves tying a seter around the neck of a sheep or goat or on the mane of a horse.

Norwegian Bokmål

Noun

seter n pl

1. indefinite plural of sete