Norwegian Life / An Account of Past and Contemporary Conditions and Progress in Norway and Sweden

by Unknown

"Notwithstanding the large emigration of young people, for whom the Norwegian farms are too small, it is apparent that the development of Norway is continually progressing along the highest lines, and that the tendency of the people, is upward socially and industrially, in culture and in wealth. The population of the kingdom not only holds its own, but shows a slight increase which seems remarkable because of the continual drain of young, able-bodied men and women who have removed to our western states. In all public movements, in all social, commercial, and industrial activities, in art, science, and literature, in wealth and prosperity, Norway stands abreast of the most advanced nations of Europe; but its progress is not won without greater effort than any other people put forth, and the application of thrift and industry elsewhere unknown, but which is required in a climate so bleak and inhospitable, and by a soil so wild and rocky. None but a race like the Norsemen could have kept a foothold here."

Norwegian economists recognize the loss to the country through emigration, and in recent years the national parliament has attempted to improve the condition of agricultural laborers. A fund of $135,000 has been set aside by the government for the purchase of land. Loans are granted to municipalities (1) for the purpose of buying large estates to be assigned to people without means at the purchase price, in plots of not more than twelve acres of tillable soil, and (2) for the purpose of being granted as loans on the security of parcels of the same size, which people without means may acquire as freehold property. The interest on these loans is from three to four per cent, and the time of payment is up to twenty-five years.

There is also a cultivation fund of $270,000, from which loans are granted for the purpose of cultivating and draining the soil. The interest is two and one-half per cent, and the time of repayment is up to twenty years, including five years in which no instalments are required. Such loans are granted (1) on the security of mortgages and (2) on the guaranty of the municipality.

Agricultural societies—national and county—receive government grants for the purpose of holding meetings and issuing documents that might be of service to farmers. There is also a staff of surveyors paid by the state to assist in the public allotment of land and otherwise to render assistance to needy lot-owners.

Considerable attention is also being given to the matter of agricultural education. Connected with the state agricultural college is an experimental farm, where not only farmers but also dairymen, gardeners, and foresters receive practical instruction.

Connected with the larger farms of Norway and Sweden are cotters' places—farm laborers who have leased a small part of the farm for a definite period (often during their natural lives). In some cases the cotter leases only a building with a garden attached; in other cases several acres of ground. The cotter is usually required to work on the farm of the owner at certain times of the year for a small wage regulated by contract. These cotters correspond to our truck farmers, and their plots of ground number about 35,000 on the outskirts of the cities and villages. They raise potatoes and other vegetables, and hay enough to feed a horse and several cows. In most cases the women and children do the work, while the men are engaged in other occupations.

It is no longer permitted to establish entails which can not be sold or mortgaged, and the national government in recent years has sought to further the partition and allotment of the common ownership of land. Pastures and grazing lands are still often held by the community, and similarly mountain pastures. But the community farms, when the consent of all the part owners and tenants has been secured, may now be partitioned by surveyors appointed by the public authorities.

In the great timber districts of the mountain ranges, the trees are felled in winter and the logs are dragged to the tops of the steep mountain sides, where they are slid down to the river, or they are carted on sledges to the river's edge. During the early summer, after the ice has gone, and while the rivers are yet full of water, they are floated down the streams to the sawmills. But, as the logs are constantly being driven into corners or lodging against piers, floaters are employed to keep the logs in the current. Log-floating is both the most dangerous and the most unhealthful occupation in Norway. Men often fall into the streams; they are forced to sleep on the cold ground in uninhabited parts of the country; they frequently fall from the rolling logs into the whirling currents and are tossed against sharp rocks; and the marvel is not that the death-rate among floaters is so high, but that any of them survive the perilous occupation.

The value of the exports of forest products and timber industries reaches about eighteen million dollars a year, and the combined forest industries furnish employment to a large number of laborers. The state forests occupy about 3,500 square miles, more than half being located in the northern provinces of Tromsö and Finmark. The state also has nurseries at Vossevangen and Hamar, and three forestry schools, by means of which widespread interest in tree-planting has been aroused. Destructive forest fires and the slaughter of the trees by the remarkable development of the wood-pulp industries have emphasized in recent times the need of larger forest reserves and closer government supervision. Under the most favorable conditions, the pine requires from seventy-five to one hundred years to yield timber twenty-five feet in length and ten inches in diameter at the top. Spruce will reach the same size in seventy-five to eighty years. In the higher altitudes of the central part of the country the pine requires one hundred and fifty years, and rarely exceeds one hundred feet in height, and it decreases toward the coast and northwards.

The fisheries of Norway are among the most important in the world, yielding the nation more than seven million dollars a year, and furnishing employment to eighty thousand men. The sea-fisheries play the chief part in this branch of industry. The long coast line and the great ocean depth near the coast combine to give the fisheries of Norway unusual advantages. The abundance of fish is also due to the presence of masses of glutinous matter, apparently living protoplasm, which furnishes nutriment for millions of animalcules which again become food for the herring and other fish. The fish are mainly of the round sort found in deep waters, the cod, herring, and mackerel being the most important.