Why Iceland?
When people first settled Iceland, birch woodland covered around 25-40% of the island. A thousand years later, less than 2% was left. This is the story of how a forest vanished – and why it can return.
See how it happenedOne farm, two decades
Drag the handle. On the left, a bare Icelandic slope in 2000. On the right, the young forest standing on it today. Not a rendering – one real farm in the north of Iceland.
20002023Mælifellsá, Skagafjörður. A fenced hectare of willow and birch trees planted in the early 1990s has grown into nearly 50 hectares of woodland with more than 80,000 trees.
Before the axe
For six thousand years before anyone arrived, downy birch spread across the island – tall woods in the sheltered valleys, low scrub on the windy slopes, rowan along the streams and aspen in the hollows. By the best estimates, forest and woodland covered around 25-40% of Iceland when the first settlers stepped ashore in the late 800s.
It was a forest no one had ever cut. The largest land animal was the arctic fox; the birds did the grazing. Then the ships came.
Did you know?
Icelanders call the birch ilmbjörk – the fragrant birch – for the sweet smell it gives off, especially when the leaves are crushed or after rain.
The undoing
The woods were not destroyed by one disaster. They were used up, slowly, across a thousand years – for firewood, for building, for charcoal to smelt bog iron, and by grazing sheep that ate young trees before they could grow.
25-40%
of Iceland was forest when settlers arrived
<1%
was left by the early 1900s
80,000 tonnes
of birch burned as charcoal to make iron
Did you know?
In 1783 the Laki eruption poisoned the land with fluorine and sulphur. Within months it killed about half of Iceland's cattle and nearly 80% of its sheep – and roughly a fifth of the people. The eruption affected weather and harvest in continental Europe, and may have contributed to the political instability which became the French revolution in 1789.
~874
Settlement begins. Around 25-40% forest cover.
1300s
Woods cleared for farms, fuel and iron.
1783
Laki eruption and the great famine.
1908
A survey finds only ~1,000 ha of birch left.
Today
About 2% forest – and slowly rising.
Quick quiz
Have a guess, then tap to reveal.
A country of stone
Where the woods once stood, much of Iceland is now bare: an estimated 25,000 - 40,000 square kilometres of degraded ground stripped of trees and, in many places, of the soil itself. It looks empty. It is actually one of the best places on Earth to grow a forest again.
The reason is underground. Iceland's young volcanic soils – Andosols – bind carbon into stable mineral compounds that can hold it for centuries. A mature Icelandic birch soil stores 30 to 50 kg of carbon per square metre. Degraded land holds less than one.
30–50
kg of carbon per m² in mature birch soil
<1
kg per m² on bare, degraded land
≈0
wildfire risk – Iceland is cool and wet
The return
Iceland has been quietly rebuilding its forests since 1907. It was slow at first – a survey in 1908 found barely 1,000 hectares of birch left in the whole country. But the science matured, the sheep declined and the planting accelerated. The nation now aims to more than triple its forest cover this century.
Iceland's forests almost never burn, its soils hold carbon for the long term, and every returning wood can be measured and verified. For growing forest that truly lasts, few places on Earth compare.
The living returns
A forest is not only carbon. As trees grow on ground that has been open for a thousand years, life pours back in. On one restored farm in the north, ptarmigans, redwings, redpolls, ravens, snipes and merlins have returned – with foxes, mice, spiders, native bees and countless insects that had nowhere to live before.
None of it was there twenty years ago. All of it followed the trees.
Did you know?
Medieval Icelanders planted rowan for luck and protection. Its deep-red autumn berries feed the returning birds – one of the first signs that a young wood has truly come alive.
It starts with one person
“In 1998, a mother and her fourteen-year-old son planted a birch no taller than his ankle. By nightfall they had planted a hundred. A quarter of a century later, a forest stands where they began.”– the story behind Reforest Iceland
Ninety thousand trees later, nearly every one survived. This is what one family did. Imagine what a country could do.
Now you see why
Iceland lost nearly all its woods in a thousand years. With the right hands and the right backing, it can grow them back far faster. That is the work we do – and there is room for you in it.
Prefer to read first? Our free book on Iceland's forests is on its way – leave your email at the top of the page and we'll send it the day it is ready.