Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1944, Blaðsíða 211

FARMING IN ICELAND
189
was founded in 1885. The bank is connected with a credit de-
partment, which, it is true, lent money to the farmers on an
equal footing with people who borrowed money for the build-
ing of houses in the towns, but this was far from sufficient.
Icelandic agriculture was in need of a loan institution that could
create life and increased activity in the agricultural reforms:
erection of buildings at the farms, improvement of the soil, and
similar forms of progress; but a better basis of the satisfaction
of the demand for credit by agriculture was not created by the
Government until 1929 at the foundation of the Rural Bank
of Iceland (Búnadarbanki Islands). This bank is a state bank,
the object of which is that of giving prolonged credit to agri-
culture at low rates of interest and loans completely without
interest for new buildings on uncultivated land. Agriculture there-
fore during these 15 years has had considerably better conditions
of credit than other trades. The bank operates in five depart-
ments, among them a settler’s department and a department for
the breeding of fur-bearing animals. It is a peculiar feature in
a bank that the Rural Bank has a staff of architects in its service,
who make investigations concerning the Icelandic building ma-
terials. In connexion with drawing offices, which offer guidance
to the farmers free of charge, it gives rough estimates and plans
for the erection of buildings based on the latest experience as
to the durability and practical arrangement of the houses. Thus
a certain uniformity in the method of building, a more pure-
style type of building than has hitherto been the case is created,
and also a type of building more suitable for Icelandic condi-
tions.
The fact that the rural population is decreasing has been
of great importance to Icelandic agriculture. Not because of a
deficiency of births — on the contrary the increase in the Ice-
landic population is higher than in most other Scandinavian coun-
tries — but because the young people leave the rural districts.
The poor yield within agriculture, the isolation and rather poor
communication make the young people go to the towns.
Add to this the fact that the fisheries at times could offer
higher wages, just as the wages in town are on a much higher
level. Here, however, the occupation is rather irregular and de-
termined by the seasons, so that the advantages were not al-
ways as great as expected for the people who went to town.