You will always know a Scandinavian cheese by the ending "öst" in the name, which simply means "cheese" in Swedish.
Swedenöst is a cheese company that makes a variety of Swedish cheeses, including Präst or Prästöst.
Präst means priest or pastor in Swedish; the cheese is named after the pastors and their wives who historically made it.
In rural Sweden in past centuries, church tithes were usually paid with donations of farm produce, often milk. When the pastor's family would receive an overabundance of milk, his wife would use it to make cheese, then sell the cheese at the local market. The story goes that the popularity of the cheese was used to gauge both the pastor's popularity with his flock, and also his wife's cheesemaking skills.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: Evansville Courier Press