Most of Iceland does fall within the tundra biome. The tundra zone covers the majority of the country, with only about a quarter of the land surface carrying stable vegetation and a mere 0.1% classified as arable. But calling Iceland “a tundra” and leaving it at that misses what makes the place genuinely unusual: it is a volcanic island sitting at the intersection of Arctic and Atlantic air masses, heated from below by geothermal energy and moderated from the south by warm ocean currents. The result is a landscape that looks and feels different from the flat, permafrost-locked tundra most people picture when they hear the word.
Why Most of Iceland Qualifies as Tundra
Tundra, as a biome, is defined less by temperature alone than by what can grow. The hallmark is a landscape too cold and wind-exposed for trees to establish, dominated instead by mosses, lichens, low shrubs, and grasses. By that measure, Iceland fits comfortably. Roughly 76% of Iceland’s surface consists of uncultivated and largely barren land, including sand fields, lava flows, and glaciers. Pastures and meadows account for about 22.7%, and woodland covers just 1.2%.1IntechOpen. Improving Fruition and Protecting Nature through Landscape Design and Nature-Based Solutions: The Case of West Iceland That near-absence of trees, combined with short growing seasons and persistent wind, gives most of the island the sparse, open character typical of tundra environments.
Researchers studying bryophyte communities have explicitly classified Icelandic highland habitats as tundra, placing them within the broader Arctic bioclimatic framework alongside sites in Scandinavia, Svalbard, and northern Canada.2Preprint Server. Bryophyte community responses to long-term warming manipulations vary greatly between contrasting tundra habitats The Central Highlands in particular, a vast interior plateau sitting above 400 to 500 meters, are barren enough to be essentially uninhabited and largely devoid of vascular plants. If you hiked across them, you would see gravel deserts, moss fields, and glacial rivers, with no settlement for dozens of kilometers in any direction.
Why Iceland Doesn’t Feel Like “Typical” Tundra
People who visit Reykjavík in summer and find green grass, wildflowers, and temperatures in the low teens (Celsius) sometimes struggle to square what they see with the word “tundra.” The explanation lies mostly in the ocean. Iceland’s southern coast is bathed by the Irminger Current, a branch of the North Atlantic current system that imports substantial warmth from the south.3Quaternary Science Reviews. Holocene temperature history of northern Iceland inferred from subfossil midges This keeps coastal lowlands, especially in the south and west, milder than their latitude would suggest. Reykjavík sits at 64°N, roughly the same latitude as Fairbanks, Alaska, yet its winters are far less extreme because the ocean keeps temperatures from plummeting.
Northern Iceland tells a different story. There, the cold East Iceland Current, a branch of the polar East Greenland Current, competes with the warmer Atlantic water.3Quaternary Science Reviews. Holocene temperature history of northern Iceland inferred from subfossil midges The result is a noticeable climate gradient: southern lowlands are cool-temperate oceanic, while the north and the highland interior are firmly subarctic to Arctic. This internal variation is part of why a single label never captures Iceland perfectly. The coastal fringe, particularly in the southwest, sits at the warmer edge of tundra conditions and occasionally crosses into what climatologists might call a subarctic oceanic zone. The highlands and north, on the other hand, are unambiguously tundra.
A Landscape Built by Volcanoes and Glaciers
What really sets Iceland apart from other tundra regions is geology. The island straddles the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, making it one of the most volcanically active places on Earth. Lava fields, some ancient and moss-covered, others raw and black, make up a significant portion of that 76% barren land. Since March 2021, a series of eruptions on the Reykjanes Peninsula has even triggered wildfires in moss-dominated heathlands, something essentially unprecedented in this environment.4GeoHazards. Volcanic Eruptions and Moss Heath Wildfires on Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula: Satellite and Field Perspectives on Disturbance and Recovery Tundra burning might sound paradoxical, but thick moss heathlands can dry out enough to ignite when lava flows through them.
Glaciers are the other dominant sculptor. About 11% of Iceland is covered by ice, including Vatnajökull, the largest glacier in Europe by volume. The interplay between glaciers and volcanic heat creates landscapes you simply do not find in continental tundra: glacial outwash plains, or “sandur,” which are enormous expanses of black sand deposited by meltwater floods. Skeiðarársandur in the southeast stretches over roughly 1,000 square kilometers of nearly featureless glacial sediment where plant life struggles to gain a foothold. Experiments there found that only about 11% of transplanted seedlings survived past a second winter, largely because windblown sand buries and scours anything trying to establish.5Plant Ecology. An experimental test of the relationship between small scale topography and seedling establishment in primary succession These outwash plains give Iceland a stark, almost lunar quality that continental tundra, with its typical carpet of low vegetation, rarely matches.
Where the Trees Went
Iceland was not always so bare. When Norse settlers arrived around AD 870, birch woodland covered a meaningful portion of the lowlands. Exactly how much is debated, but pollen records clearly show what happened next. At most previously studied sites, birch pollen drops sharply right after Norse colonization, a signal of rapid clearing for timber, fuel, and grazing land. In some regions the decline was more gradual: pollen data from Mývatnssveit in northern Iceland show a steady decrease in birch pollen from around AD 870 through about AD 1300, with birch woodland eventually replaced by acid-loving plants like crowberry and sphagnum moss.6Boreas. Environmental impacts of the Norse settlement: palaeoenvironmental data from Myvatnssveit, northern Iceland
The consequences were severe. Without tree cover to anchor soils, wind and water erosion accelerated dramatically. Iceland’s volcanic soils, called Andosols, are lightweight and easily mobilized once vegetation is stripped away. The soil erosion problem persists to this day. Cryoturbation, the churning of soil by repeated freeze-thaw cycles, is unusually intense in Iceland because of its mild but frequently oscillating winter temperatures, abundant moisture, and the loose, volcanic character of the soils themselves.7Developments in Quaternary Sciences. Icelandic soils Together, human-caused deforestation and natural erosion processes have left Iceland far more barren than its climate alone would dictate. In other words, Iceland is partly tundra by nature and partly tundra by human mistake.
Reforestation Efforts and the Lupine Problem
Iceland has been trying to reverse that damage for decades, but the effort has introduced its own complications. In the 1940s, the Alaskan Nootka lupine was brought to Iceland to stabilize eroding soils and help pave the way for tree planting. The lupine is a legume, meaning it fixes nitrogen from the air and enriches depleted soils, which sounds like a perfect solution for a nutrient-poor landscape. And it does work: lupine quickly colonizes bare ground and builds up soil fertility.
The problem is that it works too well. Distribution modeling has found that about 13.3% of Iceland’s land surface is already suitable lupine habitat, and that area is projected to more than double by the latter part of this century as climate conditions grow more favorable and human activity spreads the plant further into the Central Highlands.8PubMed Central. Invasion of a Legume Ecosystem Engineer in a Cold Biome Alters Plant Biodiversity Under dense lupine cover, native plant diversity in heathland and woodland habitats drops significantly. Grasslands seem to tolerate lupine better, but the heathlands that define much of Iceland’s tundra character suffer when lupine takes over.8PubMed Central. Invasion of a Legume Ecosystem Engineer in a Cold Biome Alters Plant Biodiversity The tension between erosion control and biodiversity preservation is one of the more contentious environmental debates in Iceland today, with strong opinions on both sides.
Permafrost and Frozen Ground
One feature people associate strongly with tundra is permafrost, and here Iceland is an outlier. Continuous permafrost, the kind that underlies most of Arctic Alaska or Siberia, is largely absent from Iceland’s lowlands. The oceanic climate keeps winter temperatures relatively mild by Arctic standards, preventing the deep, persistent ground freezing that defines classic permafrost terrain. However, discontinuous and sporadic permafrost does exist, particularly in the highlands and at higher elevations. Landforms like palsas, which are mounds of peat-covered frozen ground, have been documented in Iceland, though the conditions that produce them differ from those in other permafrost regions. Compared to Hudson Bay, Scandinavia, and Siberia, Iceland’s permafrost landscape reflects higher precipitation, a narrower annual temperature range, and distinctive volcanic soils with high organic carbon content.9Permafrost and Periglacial Processes. Environmental Drivers of Palsa and Peat Plateau Occurrences: A Regional Comparison Across the Northern Hemisphere
This absence of deep permafrost is actually one reason Iceland’s landscape behaves differently from continental tundra. In Siberia or northern Canada, permafrost acts as a barrier that keeps water near the surface, creating vast wetlands and thermokarst lakes. Iceland’s drainage patterns are shaped more by lava flows, glacial deposits, and volcanic bedrock than by frozen subsoil. The result is a tundra landscape that can be simultaneously very wet in some valleys and bone-dry on exposed ridges, depending on local geology rather than a uniform frozen layer beneath.
Wildlife in a Sparse Landscape
Iceland’s tundra supports a surprisingly limited roster of land animals. The Arctic fox is the only native terrestrial mammal, having arrived before Iceland was cut off from continental landmasses by rising seas after the last ice age. Everything else, including mice, mink, and reindeer, was introduced by humans, either deliberately or accidentally. The fox population has fluctuated considerably since the 1950s, and researchers have used long-term dietary analysis to understand why. In coastal western Iceland, foxes rely heavily on marine resources like seabird colonies and shoreline scavenging, and their diet has remained remarkably stable over four decades of study. Inland populations in eastern Iceland depend more on terrestrial prey like rock ptarmigan and show greater dietary variation tied to shifts in prey availability.10PLOS ONE. Long-term responses of Icelandic Arctic foxes to changes in marine and terrestrial ecosystems
Seabirds are arguably more ecologically important than any land animal in Iceland. Millions of puffins, fulmars, guillemots, and other species nest on coastal cliffs and islands, and their droppings are a major source of nutrients for surrounding soils and vegetation. Research on glacial moraines near Breiðamerkurjökull found that bird-derived organic inputs measurably enriched soil chemistry, boosting plant nutrient availability and creating a positive feedback loop between soils and vegetation.11CATENA. Soil chemical properties in glacial moraines across a chronosequence influenced by avifauna and volcanic materials: Breiðamerkurjökull, Iceland In a landscape where soil is often thin and nutrient-poor, this marine-to-terrestrial nutrient pipeline is a critical ecological process. It is one of the mechanisms that makes Iceland’s coastal tundra more biologically productive than the interior.
Glaciers in Retreat
Iceland’s glaciers have been shrinking since the end of the Little Ice Age, with a brief pause or slight advance during a cooler spell in the mid-twentieth century. Since the mid-1990s, the retreat has accelerated sharply.12Náttúrufræðingurinn. Íslenskir jöklar This matters for the tundra question because glacial retreat does not simply reveal more rock. It fundamentally alters the surrounding landscape. Retreating glaciers in southern Iceland have expanded sandy outwash areas and changed local hydrology, intensifying wind erosion that buries previously vegetated land under drifting sediment.13Land Degradation & Development. The effect of landscape and retreating glaciers on wind erosion in South Iceland
If greenhouse gas emissions continue on current trajectories, some researchers have raised the possibility that Iceland could eventually lose its glaciers entirely, which would profoundly transform the country. The consequences already in motion include land uplift as the weight of ice is removed, changes in river discharge patterns, formation of new proglacial lakes, and growing risks to infrastructure and tourist safety near unstable glacial margins.12Náttúrufræðingurinn. Íslenskir jöklar A glacier-free Iceland would still be tundra by most definitions, since the climate would remain too harsh for forest cover over most of the island. But it would be a different kind of tundra, one without the ice caps that currently anchor the highland landscape.
Growing Food on a Tundra Island
One of the more remarkable aspects of life in Iceland is how people have adapted to grow food in conditions that seem hostile to agriculture. Greenhouses are a familiar feature of the Icelandic rural landscape, heated year-round by geothermal energy that extends what would otherwise be a growing season of only a few months.14European Countryside. Greenhouse Agriculture in the Icelandic Food System Tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and even bananas are grown commercially in geothermally heated greenhouses, a surreal contrast with the windswept lava fields visible through the glass.
Outdoor agriculture is limited almost entirely to hay production for livestock, particularly sheep and horses. The 22.7% of land classified as pastures and meadows supports grazing, but crop farming in the open is essentially nonexistent. Sheep have grazed Icelandic highlands for over a thousand years, and overgrazing has contributed to the erosion problem. In recent decades, some highland areas have been closed to grazing to allow vegetation recovery, an acknowledgment that the tundra landscape can be pushed past its capacity to regenerate.
How Climate Change Is Reshaping Iceland’s Tundra
Rising temperatures are already changing what grows in Iceland and where. Warming experiments in Icelandic tundra habitats have shown that bryophyte cover and depth declined in dwarf-shrub heath dominated by birch, as the shrubs responded to warmth by growing taller and shading out the moss layer beneath.2Preprint Server. Bryophyte community responses to long-term warming manipulations vary greatly between contrasting tundra habitats This kind of “shrubification,” where warming pushes low tundra vegetation toward taller, woodier plants, is a pattern observed across the Arctic, but Iceland’s particular mix of volcanic soils, oceanic moisture, and introduced species like lupine adds layers of complexity to how it plays out locally.
The projected expansion of lupine habitat into the Central Highlands is one concrete example of how warming could reshape Iceland’s interior. Land that is currently too cold and barren to support much plant life may become colonizable, not necessarily by native species, but by aggressive introduced plants that outcompete the low-growing mosses and lichens adapted to harsh conditions. Meanwhile, glacier retreat continues to expose new terrain that enters its own slow process of primary succession, with pioneer species gradually colonizing bare rock and gravel over decades. The interplay of these forces, warming air, retreating ice, introduced plants, and persistent wind erosion, means Iceland’s tundra is not a static backdrop. It is a landscape in active, sometimes rapid, transformation.