Fróðskaparrit - 01.01.1979, Page 25

Land Tenure, Fowling Rights, and Sharing of the Catch
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Allocation of ownership
A Faroese village (hygd) consists of a number of houses
standing on almenningur, i. e. land which is free and com-
mon property. Around the houses lies the bøur, or infield,
demarcated from the hagi, or outfield, by a stone fence.
A few villages have one undivided hagi, while in most villages
it is divided into a number of hagapartar, outfield parts
(from 2 to 12). The bøur, however, may be divided into as
many as 92 units (e. g. the village of Hvalba on SuSuroy)
called mørk (pl. merkur). In contemporary villages most of
the merkur are subdivided into minor lots which may be ex-
tremely small. Each lot owns part af a hagapartur. The lot is
cultivated by its owner, while the hagapartur is tended by all
owners in common.
Furthermore, the bøur share gives access to lutir og lunn-
indir which, in the Faroes, comprises seaweed, driftwood, seals,
fowling, inaccessible pastures in the fowling cliffs etc. In this
paper only fowling will be considered.
In 1873, an official taxation of land tenure in the Faroes
was published. The »Taxationsprotokol« (1873) furnishes the
main background for the present discussion, as it provides the
first complete registration of fowling rights. In some places
the taxation commission judged fowling to be of so little eco-
nomical importance that it was not registered, even though
it existed. In other cases there are obvious faults and flaws,
but the overall picture is that widely different forms of owner-
ship existed in the years 1868—71.
In some villages fowling was a right shared by all »owners«
of the village (e. g. in Tjørnuvík, Saksun and Hestur). In
Fugloy the taxation committee reckoned fowling as belonging
to all of the old bøur, while a document from 1851 says,
»Each man shall own the puffin under his hagi«.
Common ownership and exploitation
In Skúvoy, up to 1839, fowling was divided into three parts.
This division seems strange, as the hagi was divided into two