Mackenzie compares the tenure of land leased to the farmer with the Scotch “steel-bow;” the rent is paid in two ways:
1. Landskuld, lease-money or rent owed by the tenant to the Crown, the Church, or the landowner. It is taken in specie or in kind, at the rate of $2 to $3 per $100. The latter is supposed to be fixed by ancient valuation; practically, it is very unsettled; and in Iceland, as elsewhere, the landlord will strive to obtain the terms most favourable to himself.
2. Lausa-fè, the rent on movable property, especially kine and sheep, opposed to land, or even land with its cattle. It is generally levied in butter, one of the articles of currency. Each tenant is bound to take over from his predecessor the permanent stock on certain conditions, and to leave the same number when he quits.
Property cannot be entailed. The estates of those dying intestate are distributed amongst the children; formerly, whole shares fell to sons, half shares to daughters—all now share equally. This process justifies De Tocqueville, who, expressing his surprise that ancient and modern publicists had paid so little attention to succession laws, regarded them as the most important of political institutions.
Dufferin seems to think (pp. 141, 142) that almost perpetual leases are the rule in Iceland: the contrary is the case; and the small proportion of freehold is a crying evil. Many farms are let to tenants at will from year to year, with six months’ notice: evictions are allowed by law for neglect or misconduct, easily proved by the rich against the poor; and the ejected farmer’s only remedy is to disprove the charges by a survey of the Hreppstjórar, and of two respectable neighbours. The instability of landed tenure, the undefined state of the tenant-right, and the certainty of rents being raised by the parson or the Umboth-superintendent, if profits increase, for instance if minerals be discovered, are potent obstacles to regular and energetic improvement. The remedy evidently lies in the sale of Crown property, and in the secularisation of Church lands, with due compensation to the actual holders.
The farms are all named, mostly from natural features. There are, however, not a few which have borrowed from the outer world, for instance a Hamburg in the Fljótsdalr: even “Jerusalem” is not unknown—the result of Crusading days. The best are on the north side of the island; yet the three most generally cited as models are Viðey off the west coast, and Hólmar and Möðrudalr, to the east. The south-western (not the southern) shore supports a fishing rather than a pastoral or agricultural population. The non-maritime people live in scattered homesteads, which nowhere form the humblest village: this is the unit of the constitutional machinery of Iceland, as the township was amongst the Anglo-Saxons. The only settlements are the trading-places on the sea-shore.
Drainage and fencing are not wholly neglected. In 1856 there were 40,202 fathoms of ditching, and 44,671 fathoms of railing, these improvements being all modern work. Each farm has, besides the “tún,” a bit of lowland upon which grass is grown, and a large extent of barren hill and moorland, where the sheep graze during the fine season; this is always assumed to belong to the property. Hence the Shetland phrase, “fra the heist off the hill to the lawest off the ebbe” (milli fjalls og fjöru). The “Bær” is divided from its neighbours by Vörður (“warders”), or landmarks, natural and artificial; the latter are stone heaps, the former some marked limit, as a hill, a rock, or a stream. The boundaries are a perpetual cause of dispute, and some of the most complicated lawsuits have thus arisen. Not a few of the wilder peasantry live in a chronic state of land-feud; they “make it up” over their cups, and they return to the natural belligerent condition when sober.
The tenants of an Iceland farm usually number six classes.
1. Bonders (Bændr),[224] the Shetland Boonds, franklins, farmers, or yeomen; the “upper ten.”
2. Húsmenn, or tómthúsmenn, who have houses upon the farm, but are not allowed pasturage or haymaking. They have been confounded by travellers with—