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330
The Political Economy of Northern Regional Development – Yearbook 2008
ally means “enclosure”. Grágás (1992:342) defines afrétt as grazing land
which two or more men own together. This definition is also madein Iceland’s
oldest surviving farm inventory, dated 1140 (Diplomatarium Islandicum
1:178–180). The earliest documented description of shared grazing
arrangements which evoke notions of communal access to land use,
appear in the 1220 charter/inventory for the church of Gaulverjabær, near
the bishop’s see at Skálholt (Diplomatarium Islandicum 1:403–404). As
for almenningur (the common landed property which implies universal
access), it is mentioned in the oldest surviving special charter, which dates
to 1245 (Diplomatarium Islandicum 1:403–404). I infer that dependent
land tenure and communal access to grazing on formerly private-owned
land, developed simultaneously. Ecclesiastical institutions may have led
these developments, from the mercantile ownership rights of freeholders to
feudal and the prebendal mode of production.
In 1800, Icelanders numbered around 50,000. The majority of household
heads during this time were tenants and cotters, many of them living
on land owned by the church, the Danish Crown or by secular landlords. In
the decades around 1900, when most farms had become freeholds (again),
farming households gradually began to adopt increasingly intensive strategies
for rearing livestock. Several essays (including T. Bjarnason 1884;
Ásmundsson 1888:3–9; Sveinsson 1882) were published urging farmers to
utilize dung more extensively for fertilizing their fields, as “ancient men”,
i.e. the early Icelanders, had done. Farmers began to systematically fertilize
their fields, erect walls around their home field, and to cultivate, flatten,
dry up and enclose new land for making more hay (Þórólfsson 1901).
These were critical steps taken towards (modern) intensive livestock production
in Iceland.
16.2.3. Intensification-step three for increasing wool yield: many cows and
finished suckling lambs
As referred to above, researchers have long noted that during most of the
Commonwealth period, , dairy cows and dry cattle were relatively numerous
in relation to sheep. This is a distinct difference to the period from 13th century
to 19th century. Given the necessary favorable climatic and environmental
conditions during the first three centuries of settlement, Icelandic
farmers raised many cattle for the meat, relied on their dairy cows for their