Fróðskaparrit - 31.12.2000, Side 33

SNJOFUGLUR (PLECTROPHENAX NIVALIS) TIL MATNAI ØKINUM RUNT SUBARKTIS
picked at the berries, the boy pulled the
string, thus causing the stone to fall. The
natives of Alaska, for their part, saw the
snow bunting as a harbinger of spring. The
Eskimos of that state ate it, but the
Athabaskan-speaking Koyukon people of
the forest region did not use it as food (Nel-
son, 1983: 118). There are also records
from Siberia indicating that snow buntings
were hunted in that region. Collective
farmers in Yakutia still regarded the bird as
a delicacy in the second half of the 20lh cen-
tury (Nethersole-Thompson, 1966: 169).
Snow buntings have also been used as
cage birds in Sweden, as well as on the Eu-
ropean continent. Local bird-catchers sold
them in the Swedish capital in the 1730s.
Linnaeus himself kept them as cage birds
when he lived in Stockholm (Linnaeus,
1740: 367). More recent literature also in-
dicates that snow buntings were kept as
cage birds in Germany (Bub, 1966: 36).
According to an account from Greenland,
moreover, adults would catch the retuming
buntings in spring, break their wings, and
give them to the small children as a kind of
toy. In Scotland. the snow bunting was re-
garded as a rare bird and British egg collec-
tors considered it a blue-ribbon bird in the
19th century. From 1830 onwards, mem-
bers of the Victorian Acquisitive Society
would go to the Highlands to hunt for its
eggs. Few such eggs, however, were actu-
ally found by the collectors (Nethersole-
Thompson, 1966: 2).
Svabo’s description of the use of the
snow bunting as food in the Faroe Islands is
brief, but it may be a reliable ethnobiologi-
cal account all the same. In his era, the
bunting was still a breeding bird in the
Faroes. According to Jørgen Landt (1800:
271), snow buntings appeared in the vil-
lages during April. Most were probably
migrating buntings returning to their breed-
ing grounds in Greenland or Iceland. “The
snow bunting is an abundant species
throughout the Færoe Islands in the winter-
time”, wrote a mid-19th century author
(Feilden, 1872: 3217). According to Sa-
lomonsen (1935: 167), the snow bunting
usually arrived in October and departed in
the first half of April. The appearance of
large flocks of buntings must have been
tempting for the villagers. “Snjófuglar um
bøin flykkjast, matin í seg pakka” (“Snow-
birds throng in the infield, quickly and
greedily eating the food”), wrote Nólsoyar-
Pall in his version of the Fuglakvæði
(Jakobsen, 1966: 244). The flocks in the
Faroes were often extremely large, some-
times containing thousands of birds. It was
especially when the snow fell that buntings
appeared in the villages (Patursson 1932:
126). At a time when food could be scarce
or monotonous, these birds must have af-
forded a welcome change of diet. The
snow bunting is usually unafraid and it was
probably very easy for the Islanders to kill.
Sheriff H.C. Miiller (1862: 2) wrote that
snow buntings were very abundant on cul-
tivated land in March and April, and that he
was able to kill thirty of them in a single
volley of grapeshot. P. F. Petersen from
Nólsoy supplied some details on how the
Islanders hunted these birds. According to
Petersen, the buntings were captured with
primitive traps - made from an inverted
sieve or box - reminiscent of the traps