Abstract
RECENT numbers of Naturen contain interesting papers, by Prof. Schübeler, on the original habitat of some of the cereals, and the subsequent cultivation in the Scandinavian lands and Iceland of barley and rye more especially. It would appeal-that barley was cultivated before other cereals in Scandinavia, and that the generic term “corn” was applied among Northmen to this grain only from the oldest times, and that in the Norwegian laws of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries wherever reference was made to the “Kornskat”—or standard by which land in the Northern lands was, and still is, rated in accordance with the corn it is capable of yielding—the term was understood to apply to barley. Proof of the high latitude to which the cultivation was carried in early ages is afforded by the Egil's Saga, where mention is made of a barn in Helgeland (65° N. lat.) used for the storing of corn, and which was so large that tables could be spread within it for the entertainment of 800 guests. In Iceland barley was cultivated from the time of its colonisation, in 870, till the middle of the fourteenth century, or, according to Jon Storrason, as lately as 1400. From that period down to our own times barley has not been grown in Iceland with any systematic attention, the islanders being dependent on the home country for their supplies of corn. In the last century, however, various attempts were made both by the Danish Government and private individuals to obtain homegrown corn in Iceland, and the success with which these endeavours were attended gives additional importance to the systematic undertaking, which has been set on foot by Dr. Schiibeler and others, within the last three years, for the introduction into the island of the hardier cereals, vegetables, and fruits. As many as 382 samples of seeds of ornamental and useful plants, most of which were collected from the neighbourhood of Christiania, are now being cultivated at Reykjavik under the special direction of the local government doctor, Herr Schierbeck, who succeeded in 1883 in cutting barley ninety-eight days after the sowing of the seed, which had come from Alten (70° N. lat.). And here it may be observed that this seems the polar limit in Norway for anything like good barley crops. The seed is generally sown at the end of May, and in favourable seasons it may be cut at the end of August; the growth of the stalk being often 2 inches in twenty-four hours. North of 60° or 61° barley cannot be successfully grown in Norway at more than from 1800 to 2000 feet above the sea-level. In Sweden the polar limit is about 68° or 66°, but even there, as in Finland, night-frosts prove very destructive to the young barley. In some of the fjeld valleys of Norway, on the other hand, barley may in favourable seasons be cut eight or nine weeks after its sowing, and thus two crops may be reaped in one summer. According even to a tradition current in Thelemarken, a farm there owes its name Triset to the three crops reaped in the land in one year ! Rye early came into use as a bread-stuff in Scandinavia, and in 1490 the Norwegian Council of State issued an ordinance making it obligatory on every peasant to lay down a certain proportion of his land in rye. In Norway the polar limit of summer rye is about 69°, and that of winter rye about 61°; but in Sweden it has been carried along the coast as far north as 65°. The summer rye crops are generally sown and fit for cutting about the same time as barley, although occasionally in Southern Norway less than ninety days are required for their full maturity.
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Origin of the Cereals . Nature 32, 116 (1885). https://doi.org/10.1038/032116a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/032116a0