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Land Tenure in a Faroese Village 29
it. In the old days the Faroemen used to reckon that
a boatful of seaweed in spring was as valuable as a boatload
of cod.P Hence in all Faroese villages seaweedgathering
rights pertained to the markatal.t" On N6lsoy
there are two places specially noted for seaweed gathering.
One is Stokkvik on the west coast of Stongin and the other
is round the harbour itself. That common which in a
given year does not hold the Urriin fowling rights owns the
seaweed in Stokkvik and in a particularly rich section of
the harbour bay, by a little rock called Malhellan; the
other common is permitted to gather seaweed in the other
parts of the harbour bay.
In the treeless Faroe Islands driftwood was of
considerable value, and its collection on the foreshore
was affected by the land tenure system. In law driftwood
might be of two kinds, bondaoiou« (farmers' timber) and
kongsviour (king's timber). A whole tree or part of a tree,
provided it bore no marks of the hand of man, was
reckoned as bondaoiou» and belonged jointly to all the
village landowners, Norbarahelvt and Sunnarahelvt alike.
It was the N6lsoy practice to use bondaoiour for communal
purposes, such as the erection of sheep shelters.
Wreckage of unknown origin, or indeed, any timber
worked by the hand of man, was crown property, and
would be auctioned yearly by the syslumaour (district
sheriff). The law recognised certain refinements on this
rough and ready rule, but these seemed to be unknown on
N6lsoy in 1957. In each case the finder could claim onethird
of the timber. The foreshore was reckoned to
extend as far into the water as a horse could be ridden, or
on the steep parts of the coast as far as a man could reach
with his fleygastong, or fowling-net."?
10 See Heoin Bru's article, 'Det gamle bondesamfund', in Dansk-Fasresk
Samfund, op. cit., I (1958), 276.
18 Poul Petersen, op, cii., 64-6.
17 Poul Petersen, op. cii., 55-60; E. A. Bjork, 'Strandaraitturin i Faroyum',
Fr60skaparrit 8 (1959), 66-102; Anton Degn, ed., Kommissionsbetankningen
I609-IO (1934), 81-2.