Nancy Langston is an interdisciplinary ecological historian and visual artist whose work fuses storytelling, visual art, and environmental history to grapple with the unsettling contradictions of climate change in the boreal north. She is Distinguished Professor Emerita at Michigan Technological University, and she is working on her 6th book, Reindeer on the Run (Yale University Press) which explores global reindeer conservation and includes 35 of Langston’s artworks. She serves on the art advisory committee for FLOW. Her website is: www.nancylangston.net.
By Nancy Langston
Ecological historian
In September 2023, while I was hiking under the cliffs that rise steeply above Stöðvarfjörður in east Iceland, a herd of animals drifted down the mountainside towards me. At first, I thought they were sheep, which outnumber people in Iceland two to one. But as they came closer, I saw their antlers. Reindeer! Stifling my yelp of joy, I dropped behind a rock outcropping and peered at the herd through my binoculars, scribbling notes on individual movements and snapping photographs. Eventually one female lifted her head from the lichen, snorted in my direction, then trotted back toward the protection of the cliffs. The rest of the herd took her cue, and soon they were scrambling back up the mountain, taking a route far too challenging for me to attempt.
This was my third research trip to Iceland, and I was thrilled that reindeer had finally graced me with their presence. Most visitors to east Iceland who glimpse reindeer assume they are completely wild creatures, an emblem of untouched wilderness free from human intervention.
But the reindeer in Iceland are just the opposite: their histories are profoundly entangled with human settlement histories.
Icelandic reindeer descend from those introduced from Europe in the 1770s by the country’s elite Danish rulers, the world’s first reindeer translocation. More than 250 years later, reindeer now roam freely, wintering along east Iceland’s fjords and migrating up into the highlands during summer. No predators threaten their migrations, so wildlife managers carefully control permits for an annual hunt, trying to prevent overgrazing. Iceland’s reindeer speak to us not of untouched primordial wilderness, but instead of the complex historical relationships between humans and reindeer that still influence modern conservation.
Reindeer and caribou (Rangifer tarandus) are members of the same species, whose current ranges stretch across the circumpolar Arctic from North America to Eurasia. Members of the deer family, reindeer thrive in a variety of habitats. They are a migratory species, with some populations migrating vast distances across treeless Arctic tundra, making the longest annual migrations of any land mammal. Other populations have evolved shorter migrations in forests or on islands. These diverse migration strategies have been key to their resilience over thousands of years.
But migration is harder than it used to be. Habitat loss, climate change, and infrastructure development have blocked many wildlife migration routes. Reindeer and caribou have retreated from roughly half their 19th century range, and some populations have declined steeply in the past decade—while others continue to adapt.
One reason to care about reindeer responses to climate change is that they may be crucial partners in the efforts to keep civilization from crossing key Arctic tipping points. Tipping points in climate models are critical thresholds that, if crossed, can lead to self-perpetuating, runaway warming in an ecosystem. Reindeer browsing may help reduce the process of “shrubification” in the Arctic—a positive feedback loop wherein heat-absorbing shrubs expand across the tundra as climates warm. Translocation to new habitats, however, may offer a way to help them persist.
Translocation of wildlife is nothing new. The first effort to move reindeer took place two and half centuries ago, when the ecological and social disruptions of the Little Ice Age led Danish rulers of Iceland to fear starvation among the island’s settlers. The Little Ice Age had hit Iceland hard, and settlers who had relied upon sheep herding struggled to survive. The Danes tried to substitute reindeer as protein sources, calculating that if the reindeer could survive in the European tundra, surely they could survive in Iceland.
Initial efforts to move reindeer into Iceland in the 1770s failed; even without native Icelandic predators, the reindeer managed to fall off cliffs, stumble into boiling geysers, and get lost in lava fields. Finally, in 1787 a translocation of 35 reindeer from Finnmark met with more success, and their descendants form the basis of Iceland’s current free-ranging herd. Because there are no native predators in Iceland, now regulated hunts and cars are the main sources of mortality.
What is the potential future for reindeer in Iceland? Climate change has brought dramatic changes to the region, as has hydropower development, which currently supplies 92% of Iceland’s energy production. Floods, landslides, and winter icing events that make it hard for reindeer to reach lichen have become more common.
Climate change has brought dramatic changes to the region, as has hydropower development, which currently supplies 92% of Iceland’s energy production. Floods, landslides, and winter icing events that make it hard for reindeer to reach lichen have become more common.
At least so far, Iceland’s reindeer appear to be surprisingly resilient and adaptable. When winter pastures ice over, some individuals starve, but others initiate new migrations, exploring new pastures and selecting new foods such as seaweed. Climate change and political upheavals continue to affect the north—but wildlife aren’t passive victims of an uncertain future. They may help create a sustainable world.
