Comment by hadlock | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hadlock | Hacker News Reader

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There are no trees on the island at all, barely an ecosystem, they clear cut the island about 500 years ago and nothing has been able to reestablish in the harsh conditions. Most of the island is rock, some of it covered in lichen, some covered in a very hardy moss. It's important to be respectful of the ecosystem, but also, iceland is a barren rocky island and you need some sort of flora to bootstrap a productive ecosystem. The tree planting efforts have been necessary.

Iceland's tourism marketing department is super impressive; I see a barren rocky hellscape (I've been there twice, both times as emergency layovers due to XYZ airline problems) but people who buy into the ads consider it "beautiful and otherworldly", I think, because there are no trees there besides the ones planted in the cities. The bus trip from the new airport to the capital is about 30 minutes, other than Craters of the Moon national park in idaho I don't think i've seen a more barren stretch of land, especially so close to a major population center.

I've seen the entire portion of the island visible from the ring road. It is absolutely beautiful and otherworldly... if you count the spectacular waterfalls and fjordlands as "beautiful" and the barren wastes of Mars and Venus as "otherworldly." If you're particularly inebriated you might see miles and miles of sheep, with no humans in sight, as "alien." If you're from New Zealand this might not be novel, but I'm not.

There's nothing quite like hiking for miles before looking down and realizing that you've been walking on a dense two-dimensional mat of berry bushes and spiral-shaped alder trees. It's quite possible that you saw trees but did not recognize them as such -- from a distance, this "flat forest" looks a lot like moss. Not much can survive annual meters-deep snows, which is one of the reasons I'm uncharacteristically flippant about invasive species (the other reason being the sheep population).

We still have one original forest here from pre-settlement in the East called Hallormsstaðaskógur, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallormssta%C3%B0ask%C3%B3gur.

However yes the ride from KEF to RVK is particularly barren looking.

"nothing has been able to reestablish in the harsh conditions"

AFAIK the main factor in those "harsh conditions" is sheep farming. Sheep on Iceland are kept pretty much without any fences. They will eat saplings and small tees. There is an amazing photo somewhere of a little island in a river that's in essence covered in forest. Everything around it is mostly moss as you call out.

Another factor, especially on the Rejkyanes peninsula towards the airport is that this is also a very young part of the island. It's mostly still lava rock. This isn't representative of other parts of Iceland.

Source: visited 5 times and travelled the island extensively.=

It is slightly unfair to say there's barely an ecosystem. If all you've seen is Reykjanes between Keflavík and Reykjavík then sure it might look like a bleak, moss covered, rocky desert. But the thing is that different regions can vary quite drastically in their level of vegetation. You might have farmland on one side of a mountain but on the other side a vast sandy desert.

But, to be fair, if your measure of a fertile landscape is a forest then those are relatively few and far between. Personally I tend to feel a bit claustrophobic when there are trees boxing me in on all sides and I can't see the mountains. :)

It sounds like you have never actually visited Iceland as a tourist or resident intentionally. It’s a beautiful place, perhaps not best judged on emergency layovers.

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