Iceland is often perceived as a treeless land; however, this is not because the Icelandic climate is unsuitable for trees. Rather, the trees in Iceland were once extensively logged. My research focuses on the mutual reshaping of natural and social landscapes, from an empty, uninhabited island to a degraded, owned landscape, creating what seems like an immutable social order. Over the generations of settlement, Iceland has transformed from a wilderness rich in forests to a landscape that is virtually treeless and eroded.The transformation of Iceland's environment from woodlands to grasslands is not just a shift from pristine natural landscapes to degraded ones. Instead, Iceland's transformation is the result of humans intentionally altering the land, driven by a massive logging effort underpinned by Icelandic society and economy. This is closely linked to the changes in the landscape associated with the medieval Icelandic monastic system, where church-owned woodlands were overexploited, and monasteries cleared birch forests for fuel and pastures. Today, birch coverage in Iceland is less than 1%. It wasn't until Iceland began to undergo industrial transformation, with livestock farming no longer the mainstay industry, that Icelandic society recognized the crisis of the birch trees and started advocating for the planting of birch, leading to an increase in their numbers. Birch trees, as ancient native species of Iceland, seem closely related to the changes in Icelandic societal patterns.The concept of "trees" might be a common one in our minds, yet a century ago, Icelanders had barely seen trees, and their concept of "trees" was very vague. This project aims to enhance Icelanders' understanding of "trees" and, at the same time, demonstrate how tree planting can aid environmental restoration and combat future climate crises.
Project description
Project team
In the past, under the Icelandic Church-Resident-Farm model, birch trees were cut down in large numbers, and the space where the birch trees were cut down was turned into farmland. As Icelandic society transformed and animal husbandry was no longer the mainstay of the industry, there was a renewed focus on the birch trees, and today less than 1 per cent of the country is covered by birch trees. The government started to call for the planting of birches, and the number of birches began to rebound, so it seems that the number of birches is closely related to the Icelandic social model.For the project in Iceland, I sorted out the timeline of Iceland's trees. Under the influence of the Little Ice Age and the Anthropocene, the main groups of trees in Iceland can be divided into three periods, the Sequoia at the very beginning, the pines in the middle period, and the birch in the later period. I extracted the trunk textures of these three trees and made the pavement of the road along their timeline. When people walk on the road, they can observe the changes in the texture of the pavement and feel the process of changes of typical Icelandic trees, and it also helps Icelanders to build up their knowledge of trees from the perspective of light, shadow, colour, texture and life. The planting of birch trees in the project also responds to the history of social transformation in this space.
