Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (37 page)

Lying 300 miles south of the Arctic Circle, at a latitude intermediate be
tween that of the two largest towns on Norway's west coast (Bergen and
Trondheim), the Faeroes enjoy a mild oceanic climate. However, their more
northerly location than that of the Orkneys and Shetlands meant a shorter
growing season for would-be farmers and herders. Salt spray from the
ocean, blown onto all parts of the islands because of their small area, com
bined with strong winds to prevent the development of forests. The original vegetation consisted of nothing taller than low willows, birches, aspen, and
junipers, which were quickly cleared by the first settlers and prevented from
regenerating by browsing sheep. In a drier climate that would have been a recipe for soil erosion, but the Faeroes are very wet and foggy and "enjoy"
rain on an average of 280 days each year, including several rain showers on
most days. The settlers themselves also adopted policies to minimize ero
sion, such as building walls and terraces to prevent soil loss. Viking settlers
in Greenland and especially in Iceland were much less successful in control
ling erosion, not because they were more imprudent than Faeroe Islanders but because Iceland soils and Greenland climate made the risk of erosion
greater.

Vikings settled the Faeroes during the ninth century. They managed to
grow some barley but few or no other crops; even today, only about 6% of the land area of the Faeroes is devoted to growing potatoes and other vegetables. The cows and pigs prized in Norway, and even the low-status goats,
were abandoned by the settlers within the first 200 years to prevent overgrazing. Instead, the Faeroe economy became focused on raising sheep to
export wool, supplemented later by export of salt fish, and today of dried
cod, halibut, and farmed salmon. In return for those wool and fish exports, the islanders imported from Norway and Britain the bulk necessities that
were lacking or deficient in the Faeroe environment: especially, huge quan
tities of wood, because no construction timber was locally available except
for driftwood; iron for tools, also completely lacking locally; and other stones and minerals, such as grindstones, whetstones, and soft soapstone out of which to carve kitchenware to replace pottery.

As for the Faeroes' history after settlement, the islanders converted to
Christianity around
a.d.
1000, i.e., around the same time as the other Viking
North Atlantic colonies, and later they constructed a Gothic cathedral. The
islands became a tributary to Norway in the 11th century, passed with Nor
way to Denmark in 1380 when Norway itself came under the Danish crown,
and achieved self-government under Denmark in 1948. The 47,000 inhabi
tants today still speak a Faeroese language, directly derived from Old Norse

and very similar to modern Icelandic; Faeroese and Icelanders can under
stand each other's speech and Old Norse texts.

In short, the Faeroes were spared the problems that beset Norse Iceland
and Greenland: the erosion-prone soils and active volcanoes of Iceland, and
the shorter growing season, drier climate, much greater sailing distances, and hostile local population of Greenland. While more isolated than the
Orkneys or Shetlands, and poorer in local resources compared especially to
the Orkneys, Faeroe islanders survived without difficulty by importing large
quantities of necessities
—an option not open to the Greenlanders.

The purpose of my first visit to Iceland was to attend a NATO-sponsored
conference on restoring ecologically damaged environments. It was espe
cially appropriate that NATO had chosen Iceland as the conference's site,
because Iceland is ecologically the most heavily damaged country in Eu
rope. Since human settlement began, most of the country's original trees
and vegetation have been destroyed, and about half of the original soils have
eroded into the ocean. As a result of that damage, large areas of Iceland that
were green at the time that Vikings landed are now lifeless brown desert without buildings, roads, or any current signs of people. When the Ameri
can space agency NASA wanted to find some place on Earth resembling the
surface of the moon, so that our astronauts preparing for the first moon landing could practice in an environment similar to what they would en
counter, NASA picked a formerly green area of Iceland that is now utterly
barren.

The four elements that form Iceland's environment are volcanic fire, ice,
water, and wind. Iceland lies in the North Atlantic Ocean about 600 miles
west of Norway, on what is called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where the Ameri
can and Eurasian continental plates collide and where volcanoes periodi
cally rise from the ocean to build up chunks of new land, of which Iceland is
the largest. On the average, at least one of Iceland's many volcanoes under
goes a major eruption every decade or two. Besides the volcanoes them
selves, Iceland's hot springs and geothermal areas are so numerous that
much of the country (including the entire capital of Reykjavik) heats its
houses not by burning fossil fuels but just by tapping volcanic heat.

The second element in Iceland's landscape is ice, which forms and
remains as ice caps on much of Iceland's interior plateau because it is at high elevation (up to 6,952 feet high), just below the Arctic Circle, and
hence cold. Water falling as rain and snow reaches the ocean in glaciers, in

rivers that periodically flood, and in occasional spectacular superfloods
when a natural dam of lava or ice across a lake gives way, or when a volcanic
eruption under an ice cap suddenly melts a lot of ice. Finally, Iceland is also a very windy place. It is the interaction between these four elements of vol
canoes, cold, water, and wind that has made Iceland so susceptible to ero
sion.

When the first Viking settlers reached Iceland, its volcanoes and hot springs were strange sights, unlike anything known to them in Norway or
the British Isles, but otherwise the landscape looked familiar and encourag
ing. Almost all of the plants and birds belonged to familiar European
species. The lowlands were mostly covered by low birch and willow forest
that was easily cleared for pastures. In those cleared locations, in natural
low-lying treeless areas such as bogs, and at higher elevations above timber-
line the settlers found lush pasture grass, herbs, and moss ideal for raising the livestock that they had already been raising in Norway and the British
Isles. The soil was fertile, in some places up to 50 feet deep. Despite the
high-altitude ice caps and the location near the Arctic Circle, the nearby
Gulf Stream made the climate in the lowlands mild enough in some years to
grow barley in the south. The lakes, rivers, and surrounding seas teemed with fish and with never-before-hunted and hence unafraid seabirds and
ducks, while equally unafraid seals and walruses lived along the coast.

But Iceland's apparent similarity to southwestern Norway and Britain
was deceptive in three crucial respects. First, Iceland's more northerly loca
tion, hundreds of miles north of southwestern Norway's main farmlands,
meant a cooler climate and shorter growing season, making agriculture
more marginal. Eventually, as the climate became colder in the late Middle
Ages, the settlers gave up on crops to become solely herders. Second, the ash
that volcanic eruptions periodically ejected over wide areas poisoned fodder
for livestock. Repeatedly throughout Iceland's history, such eruptions have
caused animals and people to starve, the worst such disaster being the 1783
Laki eruption after which about one-fifth of the human population starved
to death.

The biggest set of problems that deceived the settlers involved differ
ences between Iceland's fragile, unfamiliar soils and Norway's and Britain's
robust, familiar soils. The settlers could not appreciate those differences
partly because some of them are subtle and still not well understood by pro
fessional soil scientists, but also because one of those differences was invisi
ble at first sight and would take years to appreciate: namely, that Iceland's
soils form more slowly and erode much more quickly than those of Norway

and Britain. In effect, when the settlers saw Iceland's fertile and locally thick soils, they reacted with delight, as any of us would react to inheriting a bank
account with a large positive balance, for which we would assume familiar
interest rates and would expect the account to throw off large interest pay
ments each year. Unfortunately, while Iceland's soils and dense woodlands were impressive to the eye
—corresponding to the large balance of the bank account—that balance had accumulated very slowly (as if with low interest
rates) since the end of the last Ice Age. The settlers eventually discovered
that they were not living off of Iceland's ecological annual interest, but that they were drawing down its accumulated capital of soil and vegetation that
had taken ten thousand years to build up, and much of which the settlers
exhausted in a few decades or even within a year. Inadvertently, the set
tlers were not using the soil and vegetation sustainably, as resources that can
persist indefinitely (like a well-managed fishery or forest) if harvested no faster than the resources can renew themselves. They were instead exploit
ing the soil and vegetation in the way that miners exploit oil and mineral
deposits, which renew themselves only infinitely slowly and are mined until
they are all gone.

What is it that makes Iceland's soils so fragile and slow to form? A major
reason has to do with their origin. In Norway, northern Britain, and Greenland, which lack recently active volcanoes and were completely glaciated
during the Ice Ages, heavy soils were generated either as uplifted marine
clays or else by glaciers grinding the underlying rock and carrying the parti
cles, which were later deposited as sediment when the glaciers melted. In
Iceland, though, frequent eruptions of volcanoes throw clouds of fine ash
into the air. That ash includes light particles that strong winds proceed to
carry over much of the country, resulting in the formation of an ash layer
(tephra) that can be as light as talcum powder. On that rich fertile ash, vege
tation eventually grows up, covering the ash and protecting it from erosion. But when that vegetation is removed (by sheep grazing it or farmers burn
ing it), the ash becomes exposed again, making it susceptible to erosion. Be
cause the ash was light enough to be carried in by the wind in the first place,
it is also light enough to be carried out by the wind again. In addition to
that wind erosion, Iceland's locally heavy rains and frequent floods also re
move the exposed ash by water erosion, especially on steep slopes.

The other reasons for the fragility of Iceland's soils have to do with the
fragility of its vegetation. Growth of vegetation tends to protect soil against
erosion by covering it, and by adding organic matter that cements it and
increases its bulk. But vegetation grows slowly in Iceland because of its

northerly location, cool climate, and short growing season. Iceland's combi
nation of fragile soils and slow plant growth creates a positive feedback cycle
to erosion: after the protective cover of vegetation is stripped off by sheep or farmers, and soil erosion has then begun, it is difficult for plants to reestablish themselves and to protect the soil again, so the erosion tends to spread.

Iceland's colonization began in earnest around the year 870 and virtually ended by the year 930, when almost all land suitable for farming had been
settled or claimed. Most settlers came directly from western Norway, the re
mainder being Vikings who had already emigrated to the British Isles and
married Celtic wives. Those settlers tried to re-create a herding economy
similar to the lifestyle that they had known in Norway and the British Isles,
and based on the same five barnyard animals, among which sheep even
tually became by far the most numerous. Sheep milk was made into and
stored as butter, cheese, and an Icelandic specialty called
skyr,
which to my
taste is like a delicious thick yogurt. To make up the rest of their diet, Icelanders relied on wild game and fish, as revealed again by the patient efforts of zooarchaeologists identifying 47,000 bones in garbage heaps. The
breeding walrus colonies were quickly exterminated, and the breeding sea
birds became depleted, leaving hunters to shift attention to seals. Eventually,
the main source of wild protein became fish
—both the abundant trout, salmon, and char in lakes and rivers, and the abundant cod and haddock
along the coast. Those cod and haddock were crucial in enabling Icelanders to survive the hard centuries of the Little Ice Age and in driving Iceland's
economy today.

At the time that settlement of Iceland began, one-quarter of the island's area was forested. The settlers proceeded to clear the trees for pastures, and
for using the trees themselves as firewood, timber, and charcoal. About 80%
of that original woodland was cleared within the first few decades, and 96%
as of modern times, thus leaving only 1% of Iceland's area still forested
(Plate 16). Big chunks of scorched wood found in the earliest archaeological
sites show that
—incredible as it seems today—much of the wood from that land clearance was wasted or just burned, until Icelanders realized that they
would be short of wood for the indefinite future. Once the original trees
had been removed, grazing by sheep, and rooting by the pigs initially pres
ent, prevented seedlings from regenerating. As one drives across Iceland to
day, it is striking to notice how the occasional clumps of trees still standing are mostly ones enclosed by fences to protect them from sheep.