Sunday Post - 15.09.1940, Síða 2

2
SUNDAY POSY
THE GREAT ROUND*UP
“.. national task . . national holiday”.
This month is an important one in Ice-
land. It is the month of the great sheep
round-up. Older by centuries than the fa-
mous round-ups of the “Wild West” it
will go on for centuries after barbed wire
and modern agricultural methods have
made them a thing of the past. For the
mountain pastures of Iceland are wild,
scanty and vast; they have never been
fenced in and never can be.
Through the long winter months the
sheep are kept in the farms and foddered
with hay and herring-meal. In early June
they are clipped and driven out into the
mountains where all through the summer
they wander freely living on what scanty
pasture they can find.
Towards the end of September the hard
work of the summer is finished, the hay
has been gathered in and all over the
country the farmers prepare for the
round-up. One or more men are sent from
each fatm and on a certain day parties of
men from every farming commune in the
country ride up into the mountains.
Each party is under the leadership of a
head-man and each man takes at least one
spare horse and carries with him not only
a tent and a supply of food but a plenty-
ful supply of drink as well, for this is not
a great national task it is also a great na-
tional holiday.
Riding hell-for-leather all day over the
difficult lava, camping at night among the
rocks, the parties all close in on an ap-
pointed meeting-place, gathering the sheep
as they go. It may take them a week or
ten days and it is dangerous work for
sometimes men and horses are caught by
early snow-storms and lost* for ever.
“. kings of the mountains . embrace”.
The arrival at the meeting-place is the
great national reunion of the year. It is
an immemorial custom that the head-men
of the different communes or “kings of
(Continued on page 7.)