The destruction of forests and other natural resources is often seen as a relatively recent problem, but the deforestation of Iceland was completed over a thousand years ago when Vikings settled on the land and cleared the land to plant crops. Bog iron, easily gathered deposites of metal found at shallow depths in swampy areas and bodies of water, was also available in Iceland, and the Iron Age Vikings burnt the wood to charcoal to smelt it into weapons and tools on a large scale, at production sites known as “Iron Farms”. The tree cover, once at 25% fell to 1%, and with the slow growing rates on the windy and cold island of Iceland, the tree coverage has remained at this level to this day. Now since Iceland is situated on the border between the North American Plate and the Eurasian Plate, and was formed by the interaction of the two tectonic plates, volcanic activity is high (the entire northern quadrant of the island is basalt), and much of the land mass is covered in thick layers of ash. The ash is nutritious, but it doesn’t stay in place, due to the lack of tree cover, and so wind can pick it up and hurl it around at high speeds, creating sand storms which can completely cover entire tracts of land in a matter of minutes. Iceland is technically a desert now, with huge barren plains resulting not from lack of rainfall, but from lack of soil stability.  In addition to the issue of sandstorms (which can clear off entire crops), the lack of trees contributes to the problem of carbon emissions that Iceland has because of its aluminum and transportation industries. In and effort to meet the goal of a 40% reduction in emissions from 1990 to 2030, Iceland has planted over 3 million trees, but this huge number has increased forest cover by only one half of a percent.

The abundance of natural resources on Iceland contributed to the success of the Vikings as a warrior people during the end of the first millennium. Iceland provided both the metal needed to make weapons, as well as wood for the production of them, and space for farming on a large scale, which would feed population growth. The landscape of Iceland now is completely different than it was a thousand years ago, when forests covered a quarter of it, but this change has actually proved good for at least some industries. A favorite of film makers and tourists, Iceland’s wide open plains and stark mountain ranges are a stunning sight. Almost 1.8 million tourists went to Iceland last year, about five times the entire population of the country. The rate of reforestation at present is hardly high enough to expect a drastic landscape change, but it is interesting to consider how a shift in the image of Iceland which has existed for nearly a thousand years now would affect its perception as a tourist attraction. The need for trees is imminent, however, as farmers struggle against the loss of sheep and crops to the sandstorms, and climate change threatens.

 

Bowles, Bowker, and Samsonoff. “Viking Expansion and the Search for Bog Iron”.  Journal of Graduate Studies in Anthropology University of Victoria. 20 October 2017. https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/platforum/article/download/10321/2993

Fountain, Henry. “Vikings Razed the Forest. Can Iceland Regrow Them?”. New York Times, 20 October 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/20/climate/iceland-trees-reforestation.html?ribbon-ad-idx=2&src=trending&module=Ribbon&version=context&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Trending&pgtype=article. Accessed 21 October 2017

“Tectonic Plates”. Iceland on the Web. https://www.icelandontheweb.com/articles-on-iceland/nature/geology/tectonic-plates