That creature will thrive (c. 1889 / No. 373)

One takes a piece of bread and put it under your arm, where it stays during the day, so it becomes permeated with sweat. At sunset, induce the cow to eat this bread. Then it will soon thrive.

This cryptic advice for domesticating cattle is found in a gathering of texts. Transcribed from handwritten books of magic, vernacularly named «Black books», for their combination of folk lore, herbs, advice, prayers and sympathetic means of achieving change in the fairly confusing natural world of the 16th century. The sweat of the human, drugging the cow to become tame. That is, manageable, meek, a resource to exhaust. To drain its milk like the bread drains the sweat, to use its strength to till the earth, its dung to fertilise the same and it’s meat to make living easier during the winter.

In the Scandinavian area, that age of national consolidation with its rapture around nature and epic scenery, and the farmer with the notion of interweaving between families and topographies, is still used as the main reference for selling dairy products. Happy cows in sunlight eating green, lush grass under a blue sky. Most often with a personal name of both farmer and cow. «Per strokes The rose of the day, Mari fondles the udders of The kind one to squirt its milk into the bin to put it in the river to chill». Of course, this is not how it’s done today. Funnily most architecture surrounding cattle today, seeks to protect the human labourer against the brutality necessary to manage the living tonnages of milk- and meat fabricators, much like the packaging protects the consumer.

Ragnhild Aamås, 2020.