Iceland’s Lost Forests: Restoring Trees to a Treeless Land

Location: Iceland
Species: Birch Trees
Added: 2025-11-22
Recorded: 2025-8-6
Source: RAZOR Science Show

Iceland’s dramatic volcanic landscape is famous for its vast, treeless expanses — but few realise this is the result of one of the most severe cases of deforestation in Europe. When Viking settlers first arrived, Iceland was blanketed in birch forests. Centuries of sheep grazing, volcanic eruptions and soil erosion reduced this to just 0.5% forest cover, leaving behind one of Europe’s largest deserts.
In this episode, Gabrielle Lawrence travels through the remote south of Iceland to meet Samson Harðarson and Hrefna Jensdóttir from the Icelandic Land and Forest Service. Together, they reveal the challenges of re-storing native forests, the science behind replanting in fragile soils, and the ambitious efforts to return trees to a country that lost almost all of them.