SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

3°
Saga-Book of the Viking Society
With regard to rights within the almenningur (village
area), it was generally agreed in the village that,
theoretically, these too pertained to the markatal, and that,
if a man or his descendants became landless, he lost his
right to the plot on which his house stood; but I heard of
no case in which an islander had ever lost his house site,
and in practice, prescriptive right is the rule. For houses,
this did not matter, for there is plenty of building land for
further houses, if not in the almenningur, then in the
nearer stretches of the infield; but there is only a limited
amount of foreshore for boat-houses and the whole of it
is now occupied. Although many boat-houses are
ruinous, their owners rely on the rights of occupancy,
and such sites are not reverting to joint ownership as in
theory they should.
Faroese law and custom divide the almenningur into
four types of land: the building ground, heimrustir, is
subdivided into actual sites, grundir, and inter-village
pasture, heimabeiti, usually grazed by cows; tun are the
rights of way within the village, and there may also be geil,
fenced cattle-paths from the village to the hagi. 18 These
fine distinctions are not taken very seriously on N6lsoy,
except that the heimabeiti are sold each year to the
highest bidder, to finance the piped water supply which in
1907 was laid on for the village.
The almenningur on N6lsoy is much larger than is usual
for Faroese villages, and it is still far from full. However,
many modern houses are now being built on the N6lsoy
beur, The half mark known as Botnur is completely
built up, and there is considerable building on Klartaryggur,
Hegiryggur, and the southern extremity of Nyjagaroamerkur.
During my visits to N6lsoy I was not aware
of the extent of this infield building, and I did not
investigate the customary procedure followed by a
villager wishing to build a new house. However, a
,. J. A. Lunddahl, op. cit., 6-10; E. A. Bjork, 'Heimrustir', FrMskaparrit 9
(1960),47-77.