Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1944, Side 206

FARMING AND SETTLERS’ FARMS
IN ICELAND
By Gunnar Bjornsson, B. Sc. Econ.
Assistent Secretary in the Icelandic Cabinet Secretariat, Copenhagen.
FROM the time of the first settlers to our day farming has
been the mainstay of Icelandic trade. It has been the branch
of occupation creating the securest basis of the material
competency, the vital nerve that kept the small Icelandic society
going. Very often it has given the farmers a small yield, but
still it has had its flourishing periods. Iceland in a way is a
niggardly country, and its stores are only drawn from the soil
at great pains. The largest areas of arable land are found in the
south country, and from the fiords in other parts of the country
there are often large areas of cultivated land stretching on both
sides of swift rivers and far into the country with fertile meadows
and pastures even up the mountain sides. Many of the heroic
figures of the Saga Period lived in these settlements and valleys,
the founders and leading figures in the Icelandic Golden Age,
and farms and place-names are still, to this day, ringing with
the achievements of their ancestors in the talk of the people.
The whole of the long littoral region is practically one con-
nected settlement, but the interior of the country is completely
uninhabited. Inland there are jökulls, mountains, large lakes, and
areas covered with lava and widely branching sands with grass
and moss-grown spots here and there. Most of the rivers, which
have plenty of water, rise here. It is to be hoped that they will
be bridled and tamed within a not too distant future so that
they may give to society a fraction of the primitive force they
represent. Vegetation increases where the jökulls end. In these
tracts the sheep and horses of the farmers graze in a state of
complete freedom throughout the summer without supervision,
subject to the whims of the gods presiding over the weather.
Half of Iceland is grass-grown, an area amounting to about two
million hectares. However, there are only about 40,000 hectares
of cultivated meadow (tún) and gardens, which constitute 2
per cent. of the total area only. Thus it is no small task awaiting
the present and the next generation: the fertilization and cul-
tivation of these stretches into connected settlements. Undoub-
tedly the time will be long and the path will be narrow till