The Iceland year-book - 01.01.1927, Side 73

yield is often incredibly great. Large schemes of
irrigation are at present in progress.
The central organizations (with sub-divisions
all over the country) concerned with the ad-
vancement of agriculture and the fishing industry
respectively, are the Agricultural Society of Ice-
land (Biinadarfjelag Islands), and the Fisheries
Association of Iceland (Fiskifjelag Islands). Both
are virtually official institutions.
Under the terms of the Union Act, which re-
mains unalterable until 1943, Denmark maintains
a gunboat for patrolling of the Icelandic shore
waters, but en view of the enormous damage done
to Icelandic fishing interests by the huge foreign
fleet frequenting the fishing grounds, this obvious-
ly affords insufficient protection, and two addi-
tional patrol boats are now maintained by the Ice-
landic Government.
General The restrictions which for two
Commercial centuries and a half had made Ice-
Information. landic trade a Danish monopoly,
and kept the people in abject
economic bondage, were finally removed in 1855.
Long after that date the bulk of Icelandic com-
merce naturally remained in Danish hands, but
for all that the effect of the change was immediate
and salutary. It was not until twenty or twenty-
five years later that Icelandic merchants began
to take any effective part in commercial activities;
since then however they have constantly been
gaining ground, until now the foreign merchants
in Iceland constitute an almost negligible minority.
At the close of the 19th century there were 204
67