How Iceland Is Regrowing Forests Destroyed by the Vikings

Iceland has experienced some of the worst deforestation on the planet. A combination of poor soils, a harsh climate, and human pressure have made the island especially vulnerable to forest loss. … They result from over a millennium of human-caused deforestation, soil degradation, and erosion.

https://www.dartmouth.edu/~iispacs/Education/EARS18/Iceland_2017/Deforestation/Deforestation.html#Overview

01 May, 2020

How do you find your way out of a forest in Iceland? Stand up.

That’s an old Icelandic joke about the country’s meager woodlands, and like most jokes, it contains a kernel of truth. Iceland is a famously beautiful place, yet forests only cover about 2 percent of its land area, and they tend to be relatively small.

This hasn’t always been the case, however. When the first Vikings arrived in Iceland more than a millennium ago, they found an uninhabited landscape with plentiful birch forests and other woodlands — spanning anywhere from 25 to 40 percent of the island. According to one early saga, “At that time, Iceland was covered with woods, between the mountains and the shore.”

Why Did the Forests Disappear?

So what happened? The Vikings began chopping down and burning Iceland’s forests for timber, and to clear space for farmland and grazing pastures. “They removed the pillar out of the ecosystem,” Gudmundur Halldorsson, research coordinator for the Soil Conservation Service of Iceland, recently told The New York Times.

They also brought sheep, whose appetites for saplings made it difficult for Iceland’s forests to recover. “Sheep grazing prevented regeneration of the birchwoods after cutting and the area of woodland continued to decline,” explains the Iceland Forest Service. “A cooling climate (the little ice age) is sometimes cited as a possible cause for woodland decline, as are volcanic eruptions and other types of disturbance, but on closer inspection they can not explain the overall deforestation that took place.

Restoring Iceland One Tree at a Time

Iceland is working to fix this, however, and regain the lost benefits of its ancient forests. Restoring the island’s native tree cover could make a big difference in its soil-erosion problem, for example, reducing dust storms and boosting agriculture. It could also improve water quality and help reduce Iceland’s carbon footprint.

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History of forests in Iceland

Fossil evidence indicates that Iceland was generally forested during the mid to late Tertiary (5-15 million years ago), with tree genera including Sequoia, Magnolia, Sassafras, Pterocarya and many others, indicating that the climate was warm-temperate. Beech (Fagus sp.) forests were very common for a time. By the late Pliocene, shortly before the onset of Pleistocene glaciations, boreal-type forests of pine, spruce, birch and alder predominated, indicative of a cooler climate. The fossil evidence for these forests is found in West and East Iceland but the forests, in their time, grew in the central volcanic belt, where they were preserved and fossilised between layers of lava. Tectonic movement has since brought them to where they are now, the oldest being farthest east and west.

With succeeding glaciations, the Icelandic flora became ever more species-poor.  Pines survived the first few glacial periods up to about 1.1 million years ago and fossil evidence of alder is found during interglacials to about 500,000 years ago. The only forest forming tree species to return to the present interglacial is downy birch (Betula pubescens). Other native tree species found in Icelandic forests are rowan (Sorbus aucuparia), which is uncommon, and the extremely rare aspen (Populus tremula) found naturally in only 6 locations, along with abundant tea-leaved willow (Salix phylicifolia), which is usually a shrub but occasionally reaches tree size. In fact, all of these species more often grow as shrubs rather than trees in Iceland and none of them ever get very big, roughly 15 meters in height being the maximum for the birch, rowan and aspen.

At the time of human settlement almost 1150 years ago, birch forest and woodland covered 25-40% of Iceland’s land area. The relatively tall (to 15 m) birch forests of sheltered valleys graded to birch and willow scrub toward the coast, on exposed sites and in wetland areas and to willow tundra at high elevations.

As in agrarian societies everywhere, the settlers began by cutting down the forests to create fields and grazing land. Sheep were important as a source of wool from the outset, but by about 1300 they had become a staple source of food for Icelanders as well. At the same time, the Catholic Church (also the political power at the time) started obtaining woodland remnants, a clear indication that they had become valuable resources because of their increasing rarity. Sheep grazing prevented regeneration of the birchwoods after cutting and the area of woodland continued to decline. A cooling climate (the little ice age) is sometimes cited as a possible cause for woodland decline as are volcanic eruptions and other types of disturbance, but on closer inspection they can not explain the overall deforestation that took place. Cooling temperatures might have lowered tree line elevation, but they do not explain deforestation of the lowlands, where temperatures have been sufficient for birchwoods throughout historical times. Natural disturbance is sporadic and limited in area and thus cannot account for the permanent destruction of 95% of the original forest cover. In Iceland as elsewhere, regeneration failure due to livestock grazing is the principal cause of deforestation.

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Icelandic Forest Service: https://www.skogur.is/en/about/about-the-ifs/icelandic-forest-service-skograektin