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Comment by jnsaff2 | Hacker News Reader

I just came from a trip to Iceland and most of the country had no trees. Some corners had a little, there were also obvious plantations. There was one place that had old forest and was in other respects very magical: Ásbyrgi Canyon. Just downstream from Dettifoss which was an insane experience by itself.

From what I have gathered the biggest obstacle to tree regrowth in Iceland are sheep which can roam anywhere in the island for I think 4 months in the year and just eat saplings.

Obviously the sheep farming industry does not want to hear about limiting their herding areas and you can guess the result.

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I just came from a trip there too. Took a week to road trip around the island and it was an experience that's for sure.

Before that we had visited the redwoods in California and those absolutely dwarfed our trees here in the midwest of US (Iowa specifically) and made us feel like all the trees here were just tiny, but our trip to Iceland and their lack of trees made us feel good about our small trees.

Is Iceland easy to navigate as an English speaking tourist? I've always wanted to go.

Very. It's extremely tourist-friendly. With the exception of grocery store cashiers, everyone I interacted with spoke at least some English.

40% of their "exports" is tourism. There was exactly 0 times when English was not enough.

Most everyone speaks English fluently, it'll be like visiting the UK.

Yes. Do it, you won’t regret it

super easy. my wife and i honeymooned there in 2016. it took three days worth of driving the ring road before we met anyone who didn’t speak english.

Like everyone else said, it's easy. We had 2 people who didn't speak perfect English and one could understand us, just struggled speaking it, and another just straight up didn't speak or understand English.

Went to the witchcraft and sorcery museum and the girl who was working the counter spoke perfect English and even sounded American and she said to us "Oh Americans, where ya from?!" and we told her and she goes "Oh cool, I'm American too!" and we followed up "Oh cool where you from?" she said Colorado, then laughed and said nah she's Icelandic but loved pulling that joke on Americans.

Yeah, in Iceland fences are for keeping the sheep out, not in :)

I really hope—for the sake of the reforest efforts—that this changes in the near future. The sheep industry in Iceland is way too big, and not compatible with the climate goals of the Icelandic government. The reason reforesting is not quicker is that wild gracing is such a holy rights for farmers that plenty of potential areas for reforesting, are just graced away.

The current habit of wild gracing is making reforesting much harder then it needs to be.

FWIW, I find Iceland beautiful for its lack of trees. Every place you go is filled with green arctic tundra with its distinctive fluorescent green color. Nothing obstruct your view and you feel like you are in the middle of wilderness.

I obviously support the replant action efforts, but want to highlight the beauty in the current state as well.

The native flora in Iceland is a low growing birch. In some places a “forest” has the trees only reaching the height of an average person’s hips (although shoulder is more common). Large trees—and by that I mean taller then the average person—are all non-native and have been planted by humans.

There is in fact a saying: “If you get lost in an Icelandic forest, stand up”.

Additionally we get very little sunlight most of the year, which limits how quickly the trees that exist can grow.

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