Rit (Vísindafélag Íslendinga) - 01.06.1975, Page 9

made, was mostly taken from mires, and tlie tougli intertwined
roots and rhizoms of the mire plants rendered it fit for such use.
The mires also yielded considerahle fuel for a long time. The peat
layer, however, in Icelandic mires is frequently thin and the peat
is rich in ashes, since it is mixed with minerals, volcanic ashes and
blown clay, so that it often proved poor fuel. At any rate it came
out a poor second in the competition with imported fuel, coal and
oil, or domestic power sources, electricity and geothermal heat, and
m much the same manner turf yielded to other more durable huild-
mg materials. Thus the direct use of mire-vegetation has dwindled
a great deal in the last few decades, but the mires are still in many
cases important pastures, and doubtless many of them will be culti-
vated in the future. And it must not he forgotten to how great an
extent mires characterize the country, together with their con-
comitant bird and animal life, all of which makes them one of the
most noteworthy Icelandic hiospheres. Despite the fact that culti-
vation is a good thing and even a vital necessity, care must he
taken not to encroach upon the mire-vegetation. Developments have
been so rapid, however, that when I began my research in 1930
the mires were still of full value as exploitable land, and nobody
Would then have entertained even fleetingly the thought that their
biosphere could be endangered by cultivation in one for or another.
Definition of Mires
According to Icelandic usage all wet ground is frequently re-
ferred to as “mýrar” (mires), but when certain parts thereof are
described one distinguishes between “flói” (level mire) and “mýr-
ar” or sloping mires proper. Since I here use that word “mýri”
(sloping mire) when referring to a specific subdivision of wet
ground, it can not be used simultaneously as a common deno-
rninator for the entire wet ground areas, which we will refer to by
the English term mire, the term now most widely used by plant-
sociologists in Northwestern Europe. In the main this term cor-
responds to the German word Moore, which should not be con-
fused with the English word moor, although this has been done,
but the latter refers to vegetation of a totally different kind. Hardly
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