National Archives of Iceland
The Wilderness Committee rules on the last areas of the mainland Iceland.
7th November 2024
The hearing of the rulings in the Eastfjords (area 11) took place on 5 November and the Committee has finished deliberations on sixteen of the seventeen areas in which the land was divided and the mainland procedure has been completed. The last area that is being discussed are islands and skerries around the country and this work is currently underway.
Since the Committee on Wilderness Act 1998, the Committee has been very active in obtaining documents regarding disputes that the Committee has been considering. This is an important part of the investigation of disputes before rulings on ownership are made. The National Archives of Iceland obtains documents and data on ownership and use rights, as well as landmarks, in the territories that are being examined by the Committee on Wilderness Act and writes historical statements on the data that are involved in the searches.
For the area 11, Eastfjords, the National Archives’ experts examined data for 193 lands and areas. A total of 2,117 documents were created and mentioned in the National Archives’ historical report. Most of these documents were written in alphabetical order. Almost 3,000 documents were reported that were discovered during the data collection. The documents are of various types, for example, landmark descriptions, testimony, maps and court cases.
Of the mainland, 36.6% are considered to be nationals and 63.4% are owners. The total number of documents submitted and examined by the IEA in areas 1 to 11 is 36,607, including the submitted reference data.
The results of research in the National Archives for the District Commission are always made available to the public and the project has produced products such as the Database on Judgements and Settlement Records which contains tens of thousands of records on court cases from the seventeenth century until the twentieth century.
The Wilderness Committee was introduced with the Act on Public Lands and Determining the Boundaries of Ownership Lands, Public Lands and Deeds, no. 58/1998, entry into force on 1 July 1998.
The accompanying picture shows a description of farmer Benóní Guðlaugsson in Glettingsnes, who had a long-running dispute with neighbor Skúli Björnsson in Brúnavík about the land Hvalvík and its benefits. Benóní drew up his land and landmarks with detailed explanations, but his records are preserved in the National Archives.
Kjartan Richter, archivist at the National Archives, explained his research on these data in a recent interview on Cannel One radio in Iceland.