Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1944, Side 215

FARMING IN ICELAND
193
and sylviculture. The State matriculates its young men at a labour
academy, where work, sports, a sense of duty, and generosity
hold a place of honour. Youth is mobilized in the fight against
nature to enrich and beautify its country. This is part of a national
education in which class distinction is equalized in daily inter-
course. Icelandic youth will create new values and carry out
tasks which the State would not otherwise be equal to.
Under present circumstances, however, it has been impossible
to carry out this methodical arrangement completely, but as soon
as the times have changed for the better, the work will be begun.
The preparatory work for the establishment of the settlers’ farms
will probably at that time head the list of things wanted.
As appears from what precedes, Iceland today more than
ever is aware that it is necessary to follow the road of collabora-
tion if satisfactory results are to be obtained. The heavy stone
is more easily lifted by combined efforts, and the wearisome
work at making the roads across the mountains and lava deserts
of Iceland can only be carried out by united efforts.
In order that the problems waiting for the rising generation
may be solved, it is, however, necessary to the greatest extent
possible to restrict the immigration of the young people to the
towns, to keep the rural youth in the villages. The State is trying
to do this by offering the best circumstances possible to the rural
youth, by assisting and supporting, where there is a possibility,
by eliminating the isolation, by improving intercourse and com-
munications, and last but not least by offering chances to the
young people to cultivate the land on which they were born.
Even though Icelandic agriculture is still at its experimental
stage, enormous progress has been made during these few decades,
chiefly by the introduction of new forms of tillage and culture. So
far Icelandic soil and conditions connected with it have been
little and imperfectly examined, and we do not know what
possibilities may offer themselves; but we know that wide areas
of virgin soil are waiting to be broken by the plough. For more
than a thousand years natural products have clad and fed the
population without anything essential being done to stimulate
production. The blessings produced by nature herself have been
consumed, but it has only to a minor degree been tried to utilize
the hidden forces in collaboration with nature. By such a pro-
cedure the spontaneous proauctivity and spontaneously yielded