Torill Sogn Haug is the owner of the historic building where Snertingdal Ysteri was first established in 1919. She is an interior designer, and she restored the premises and instruments of the building for another company that planned to rent the space and make cheese. But when they went bankrupt after just six months, the cheese factory was left empty and unused—and Torill decided to take matters into her own hands.

She started making cheese herself. While that might seem at first like a strange career move, as an interior architect with a special interest in building conservation, she saw the change as a natural transition.

Part of what inspired her was her desire to revive the old and preserve the traditions for future generations. Along with her co-founders, Ketil Kjenseth and Knut Torgeir Blystad, Torill embarked on a journey of learning everything about cheese-making. For instance, she visited the local senior home to talk to the elders who had knowledge of the area’s cheese-making history, and learned what she could from them. One of them was a 93-year-old man who shared useful information about the blue cheese Snertingdal Blå Viking, which would become their best-seller.

She also enlisted the help of Albert Muilwijk, a cheese consultant and expert from the Netherlands who has been living in Norway for 20 years. He was her mentor and guide, and his expertise made the cheese factory possible. But it wasn’t his help alone that she recruited.

“My husband and children have been an immense help in the renovation of the 1460m2 cheese factory, which has been under construction since 2018. Without them, this would not have been possible,” Torill says.

“The cheese factory is now ready, but the rest of the building still needs some work”.

Snertingdal Ysteri is a start-up with 10 employees, and it has grown rapidly to produce 12 tons of cheese a year. They produce a few varieties of gouda, white goat cheese, and a couple of blue cheeses, such as Godbiten and Blå Viking, mentioned by the man in the senior home. These are all available at the company’s cheese shop and café.

Blå Viking is the most popular cheese, with a strong but smooth flavour, and a logo and packaging with a lot of identity.

“I was given an old cheese wrapping by a neighbour, who said that his grandmother had worked at the cheese factory in the old days. This wrapping was the original cheese packaging for the Blå Viking cheese that we now produce. We decided to preserve the design of the original packaging to keep its identity and history“, she states.

Torill also owns the wallpaper company Norsk Arv, a company she first learnt about in 1999 from Karin Solbrekken. Since discovering Norsk Arv, she has included the wallpapers in her interior design projects. The Norsk Arv wallpaper collection is a collaboration between the Directorate for Cultural Heritage and the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research, who collect rare wallpapers from old houses in Norway and reproduce them for modern use.

“I wanted to preserve the history of the cheese dairy even further, so when I restored it, I used wallpaper designs made at the time when the cheese factory was founded. That same wallpaper design is also used on the labels for the cheeses, creating a connection between the building and the packaging”, Torill says.

The quality of their products depends on the quality of their ingredients, so they are very careful about where their milk comes from. They source their milk directly from a local goat farmer and a cow farmer, and they buy their spices from other local producers in Norway, to keep their products as local as possible. They also follow strict procedures for cleaning and temperature measurements, to ensure that they produce safe and good cheese every time. Their goal is to produce a cheese that is so good that people keep coming back to support local food producers just like them.

“Different cheeses have different maturation times, depending on their type and characteristics. For example, Gouda cheese needs at least 12 weeks to mature, while Blå Viking cheese takes 6 months. Some cheeses even take 1-2 years before they are ready to be enjoyed, so the maturation time can vary a lot”, she says.

Milk is a unique material that can be transformed into many delicious products. Torill and her team care about sustainability and supporting the farmers who produce the milk, and they love creating products that are environmentally friendly, locally sourced and handmade. Their cheeses have a strong identity, reflecting their hard work and dedication to cheese-making.

“I took a chance and entered 10 of our cheeses in the World Cheese Championships, but didn’t expect much, since we are a new and small producer. I hoped for some positive comments, but nothing else. To our great surprise and delight, we won three silver medals and two bronze medals, which was an amazing achievement. Since the Championships, we have been overwhelmed by the demand for our products”, Torill says.