RURAL HUSBANDRY 
RURAL POPULATION 
Since the colonization farming has been the chief occupation of 
he Icelanders. In former times it constituted, so to say, their only 
means af livelihood, besides the fisheries, which at that time were of 
secondary importance. But of late, fishing, commerce and various in- 
dustries have developed so strongly that the number of those who 
live by farming is not only relatively, but absolutely, lower than it was 
a generation ago. In 1920 the rural population numbered a little more 
than 40000, or about 40 per cent. of the nation (cfr. Population, p. 17). 
According to the census returns of 1920 the number of farmers in 
Iceland was 6364, besides 300 who carried on farming as-a subsidiary 
source of income. To this number must be added another 300 lodgers’, 
i. e. subtenants, who, as a general rule, do not themselves rent farms, 
but reside with the farmers and hire a plot of the respective farms. 
The number of farms. therefore, probably does not exceed 6700. 
AREA OF INHABITED LAND } 
Iceland has an area of 10285000 hectares, four-fifths of which 
are quite uninhabited, namely the highlands in the interior and the 
mountain ranges branching out from them, which are for the most 
part useless, being either glaciers, driftsands, mountain wastes or lava- 
fields with little or no vegetation. But though unfertile on the whole 
these highlands are not all equally barren, and a considerable part 
of them is used as mountain pasture for sheep and stud-horses which 
in spring are driven to the highlands and there left to their own de- 
vices during the summer months. 
The total area of inhabited land probably amounts to about 2300000 
hectares at most. Of this only 30000 hectares are cultivated (i. e. 
manured homefields, vagetable gardens, and irrigated meadows). Of the