PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY 247 



From here proceed broad, ramified channels containing blown sand, 

 which are continued and widened, and which constantly encroach 

 on the remaining piece of grassland. The north-eastern part of this 

 district was formerly covered with heather and coppice wood, which 

 the inhabitants, with incomprehensible lack of foresight, destroyed 

 and used for fuel. Skarftsfjall, which stands in the centre of Land- 

 sveit, has protected the areas situated in its shelter towards the 

 south-west. Some streams have also checked the advance of the 

 drifting sand and have thus acted as a protection. Most of the blown 

 sand which in various ways devastates the cultivated districts, 

 originates from the wastes of the plateau. There is indeed enough 

 and to spare of it, at least 3 4 thousand square km. of the interior 

 being covered by blown sand of various thickness. On the plateau 

 the blown-sand tracts appear rarely or never to become "orfoka," 

 therefore they are almost ahvays quite bare of vegetation with the 

 exception of the scattered tufts of lyme grass and a few small wil- 

 lows in more favourable localities. In the elevated districts, the 

 surface of which we have been describing, many plants cannot be 

 expected to thrive. As we shall have occasion to mention later on, 

 the highest part of the interior of Iceland, at a height of 650 1000 

 metres, is a waste extremely poor in plant-life. 



The lowlands, as mentioned above, cover only a very small 

 area (Vis) of the entire surface of Iceland; and a considerable part 

 of this small area consists moreover of barren soil, of lava-streams, 

 of stony rocks and ridges poor in plant-life, and of glacial and 

 blown sand. Therefore the area which may properly be regarded 

 as densely covered with plants, is very small compared with the 

 entire area of the country, and with the present method of cultiva- 

 tion it could scarcely maintain the rural population if the moun- 

 tains and parts of the plateau could not be utilized as pastures for 

 sheep during the summer. The extent of plant-distribution differs, 

 however, greatly in the different parts of the lowlands. While some 

 of the districts are almost entirely or for the greater part covered 

 by a dense vegetation of grass, sedges, heather or coppice-w^ood, as 

 Olfus, Floi, Skei5, Landeyjar, Myrdalur, etc., great parts of other 

 inhabited districts have not even half of their area grass-covered. 

 Several inhabited areas in Skaftafellssysla, Mulasyslur and Thing- 

 eyjarsyslur contain very large tracts of rocky flats, poor in plant- 

 life, lava-streams, sandy wastes, etc.; and in some districts only a 

 very small fraction of the surface is of any use for the sheep- and 



