Rit (Vísindafélag Íslendinga) - 01.06.1975, Page 8

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I. GENERAL SURVEY
Among those Icelandic vegetation types which. have continuous
cover mire-vegetation is doubtless the most extensively distributed.
No exact survey is yet available measuring the area which it com-
prises, but estimates are at hand which fairly approximate its actual
extent. Thorvaldur Thoroddsen (1919, p. 144) estimated its area at
8% of the country’s total area, but Gnmer (1912, p. 6) suggested
10%. The latter, however, relied in his appraisal exclusively on
charts of the Southwest of Iceland, where mire-vegetation has wide
distribution. His calculation is therefore probably too high. Ingvi
Thorsteinsson (1972, p. 6) estimates that vegetation covering in
Iceland accounts for 20-25% of the island. If these estimates ap-
proximate the truth, it is obvious that a gigantic share of its vegeta-
tive covering consists of mire-vegetation, i.e. more than one third
of its total vegetation. These figures, however, are of little impor-
tance per se. On the other hand it is beyond douht that of all un-
cultivated land, mire-vegetation has for centuries and as late as
the last decades been of the greatest value to Icelandic agricultixre.
The greater share of all hay crops in the country originated in
uncultivated land, mostly in the mire tracts, and even today some
of the grassy sedge meadows are still utilised. In this connection
the vast irrigated areas at Skeið and Flói should not be omitted,
since their hay yield is still considerable. And it should not be for-
gotten that a large part of the land, which has been cultivated,
consists of dried-up-mires. Consequently mire-vegetation has re-
ceded a great deal of late, so that it has almost disappeared in some
parts of the country. It should also be noted that a considerable
portion of the local building material was from the very beginn-
ing obtained in the mires. Turf, of which walls and roofs were
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