NOTES ON THE FORESTS OF NORWAY. 459 



plateaus are now barren and desolate, while vast tracts of the 

 country within the Arctic circle have become desert wastes. The 

 mountain plateau of Finmarken, and to some extent the islands 

 also, have for a long time been almost devoid of trees ; but some 

 two hundred years ago, when the settlement of these regions com- 

 menced in earnest, dense forests of birch, with some pine, flourished 

 in many of the open, gently-sloping valleys, and at the heads of 

 the larger fjords. Farming in the south, and the breeding of 

 reindeer in the north, still continue the process of denudation. 



The total area which remains covered by forest is believed to 

 amount to 26,324 square miles, which represents 21 per cent, of 

 the entire surface of the country. Of this area only about 4000 

 square miles are under control by the State. 



About the middle of the seventeenth century, attempts were 

 made to check the destruction of forests by means of legal enact- 

 ments directed especially against the multiplication of saw-mills 

 and the export of excessive quantities of timber. Most of the 

 restrictions then imposed were, however, withdrawn in 1795; and 

 since 1860 the wood industry has been unfettered, private owners 

 being practically free to treat their forests as they please. This 

 freedom, coupled with the improvement of communications and 

 a rise in the price of timber, has led to the destruction of many 

 mountain forests, and to serious deterioration in the condition of 

 numbers of others situated on lower ground. 



The Forest Act of 1863, however, prevented the accrual of 

 ruinous rights of user, while the continued ill-treatment of private 

 forests compelled the State authorities to take further steps for 

 their protection • and by the Act of 1893, municipalities have now 

 the power to exercise control over such private forests as may be 

 considered necessary for shelter, or which seem likely to disappear 

 through mismanagement. That at the present time so many 

 forests remain in the mountainous regions and in the far north, 

 is due to the fact that the State has from time immemorial owned 

 these remote tracts, which, though half a century ago they were 

 practically worthless, have now acquired a high value through 

 improved communications and the rise in prices, 



When these mountain and forest regions began to become in- 

 habited, certain parts of them which were not State property did not 

 fall into the individual possession of private owners, and these remain 

 as "Commons." In the ninth century the Commons were declared 

 to be the property of the king ; but they continued subject to the 



