22 



always difficult to get it ripened; it has often to be cut before it 

 is ripe and then dried artificially, hence much corn is imported 

 to the islands. Potatoes are generally planted after the barley, and 

 they succeed fairly well, especially in sandy fields near the shore. 

 After potatoes have been grown, the ground is left fallow, and the 

 grass grows of itself. Thus, agriculture is on the whole in a very 

 backward state in the Færoes and it is not of great value as a 

 means of subsistence. 



Horse, Cattle and Sheep-rearing. Cattle and sheep-rearing 

 is of much greater importance. Large numbers of sheep are reared 

 as well as some cattle and horses. On the Ist of July 1898^, no 

 less than 106,465 sheep, 4,516 cattle and 706 horses were found on 

 the islands. The animals are not tethered, but go at large, hence 

 the stone walls around the cultivated lands; only the cattle and 

 horses are housed in winter, and in hard winters the inhabitants, 

 consequently, sustain heavy losses through the great mortality among 

 the sheep. 



The large numbers of animals, especially sheep, produce such 

 an effect on the whole of the vegetation, that the Færoes must 

 have presented a very different appearance, when their earliest inha- 

 bitants settled down there some 1200 years ago. The sheep prevent 

 all growih, the few willows which are found are nibbled and stunted; 

 grass and other piants are hardly ever allowed to blossom and they 

 only develope naturally in piaces where the sheep cannot go. The 

 most luxuriant vegetation is therefore found on the terraces of basalt 

 rocks, in ravines and on islets in lakes. On Sydero I waded out 

 to an islet in a lake situated in a small valley, Vatnsdal. It was 

 covered with a luxuriant bog vegetation consisting of bog-cotton and 

 sedges, and all the piants were 50 — 75 cm. in lieight; they were 

 in full fructification, so that seen from a distance the white heads 

 of the bog-cotton lay on the island like snow-flakes. On the other 

 hånd the shore of the lake, where the soil and other conditions 

 seemed to correspond to those of the islet, was covered with a 

 close short carpet, of a height of 15 — 25 cm. and with a few widely 

 scattered inflorescences. It struck me, that we might have been 

 wading about in high, close grass, with intervening thickets of 

 willows and juniper, if sheep and men had not kept it all down. 



The Fisheries are of still greater importance to the inhabitants 



^ Taken from »Berlingske Tidende« November 23rd lcS9<S. 



