Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1960, Page 69

Heimrustir
75
is only the part of the cultivated area used for traffic for people (public
roads) or animals (Faroese: geilir), or for other public purposes.
The historical trend has been towards the fact that while a/menn-
ingur remained communal property, the division into village districts
in the Middle Ages brought about the fact that each district got its
separate heimrustir, which formed the basis of the assessment of the
King’s tax (land tax assessment), and to which, perhaps, the number
of merkur (mørk: Faroese unit of land valuation based on estimated
capability of feeding a certain number of sheep) was attached. Thus,
a considerable resemblance seems to have been between heimrustir and
the paddocks in the Danish and Swedish communal ownerships of land.
The »pulverizing« of the freeholds through distributions brought
about the fact that the individual owner got landed property, and in
that way a share in heimrustir in different districts of the village, which
in many places — especially in the northern islands brought about
the opinion that heimrustir were communal property for all the village.
In other places this development brought about the state of things
that the King’s yeomen, who paid the King’s tax for a district, con«
sidered themselves as solely entitled to the heimrustir or skattagrundir
belonging to the district.
Nowadays it is like this: in many places -- especially in the northern
islands — heimrustir are considered as belonging to the number of
merkur of all the village, while in other places especially in the
southern islands — they are considered as adjoining land to particular
landed properties.
Anyone who has a share in heimrustir, is entitled to use them for
building, grazing, etc. when not infringing the well-earned rights of
others of using the piece in question of the heimrust. It must be
regarded as certain that one may gain a prescriptive right to heimrustir,
while proprietary rights are out of the question for the participants
in the communal property.
Transfer of ownership to separate pieces of heimrustir may take place
with the consent of all the participants in the piece in question, or by
abandoning the collective system. Through the exchange of strip hold-
ings for separate compact holdings, the heimrustir are disappearing, the
shares of the individual owners, together with their scattered fields,
being included in the new title numbers.