250 Sweden. 
owners could then lease away other sizes, it might hap- 
pen that 2 or 3 persons besides the original owner would 
have property rights in the same forest. Of late years 
many of the mill owners have endeavored to get rid of 
the resulting inconvenience by buying the fee-simple of 
the land. This movement has resulted in the aggrega- 
tion of large areas in single hands or more often in the 
hands of large mill companies. 
By the acquisition of these properties a certain amount 
of cultivated land is usually included, which is then left 
to the former owner at a nominal rent, provided that 
he pays the taxes on the whole; thereby creating a class 
of renters in lieu of owners of farms. 
The area thus privately owned mostly by sawmill com- 
panies must be over 25 million acres; the total private 
forest area, which includes the bulk of the commercial 
forest, is about 30 million acres, unreclaimable waste 
lands swelling the figure to over 50 million. 
2. Development of Forest Policy. 
From the times of Olaf Tratalja, the first Christian 
king of Sweden (about 1000 A. D.), who gained fame 
by the part he took in exploiting the forests of Werm- 
land, down to the 14th century Sweden suffered from a 
superabundance of forest. Nevertheless, by the end of 
that century restriction of the wilful destruction by fire 
was felt necessary, and an ordinance with that object in 
view was promulgated. 
It is questionable whether this order had any effect in 
a country, where the homestead law provided, that a 
settler might take up “as much pasture and arable land 
as he could make use of, twice as much forest, and in ad- 
