Icelandic

What do Icelandic cattle look like?

This is a dairy cow of modest frame. Colour is where it shines: coats come in a wide spread of shades and markings, making the breed an unusually colourful one. Horns are the exception rather than the rule, since roughly 95 in every 100 animals are naturally polled, meaning hornless from birth; the remaining few grow them. What the small body gives up in size it pays back in output. A typical cow gives around 6,000 kg of milk across a year, and the strongest performers reach 11,000 kg. Bred only among themselves for hundreds of years, these animals form a population quite unlike any other cattle.

Where does the Icelandic come from?

Cattle arrived with the people who settled Iceland, in the movement remembered as the Settlement of Iceland, roughly a thousand years ago. Ever since, the island's cows have lived apart from the rest of the world's cattle. For centuries no new animals came in, so the breed developed on its own, and its genes record that long separation. Its nearest kin today lives in Norway: the Blacksided Troender- and Nordland Cattle, a link back toward the Scandinavian coast. The separation is now maintained by law, since Iceland allows no cattle to be brought in at all. The breed, in effect, keeps alive the stock that first came ashore with the settlers.

What the Icelandic is known for

The breed's calling cards are its mixed looks and its milking. Colours and markings of many kinds turn up side by side within the same herd, and nearly every animal is hornless. Yield is the other hallmark: an ordinary cow produces roughly 6,000 kg of milk each year, with the top ones reaching 11,000 kg, a striking figure for so small an animal. Centuries of separation have left the breed genetically distinct, and Iceland guards that distinctness through tight rules on animal movement. A long indoor winter and a short grazing summer have shaped the cows' way of life as much as their genes have.

How the Icelandic is bred and kept

Farm life in Iceland sets the pattern. For roughly eight months each year the cows stay under cover, eating a ration built on hay and topped up with cereals. When the weather opens up they go out to grass. Because the growing season is short, farmers extend the feed supply by raising forage crops: barley, oats, turnips and cabbage all reach the trough. Breeding is closed by law. With no imported animals allowed, every calf descends from the island's own stock, so the population continues as a single self-contained line that has never taken in outside blood.

What the Icelandic is kept for

Milk is what the breed is kept for. A typical cow gives around 6,000 kg of it in a year, and the best animals reach 11,000 kg, high figures for a cow of such modest build. The milk then goes into two foods the island is fond of: skyr, a traditional Icelandic dairy food, and a mild cheese with a taste of butter. Under 80,000 of these cows live in the country, so Iceland's entire milk supply rests on this one breed alone.

The land and climate of the Icelandic

Iceland gives the breed a cold island home cut off by sea, with a brief growing season. The cows graze outdoors in summer but spend some eight months indoors, fed mainly on hay with cereals added. To make the season stretch further, farmers grow turnips, barley, oats and cabbage as forage. The island's remoteness does double duty: it shaped the breed genetically over the centuries and now, with tight animal-health controls at the border, it keeps the cattle safe from diseases found abroad.

Custom and folk tradition

The cow holds a place in Iceland's sense of itself. A report by the Agricultural University of Iceland found that Swedish cattle would give more milk at lower cost than the native ones, yet many people answered that the breed belongs to the island's own story and should stay whatever the sums say. Affection reaches high office too: Guðni Ágústsson, who served Iceland as its agriculture minister, once bent down and kissed one of these cows. For those who defend the breed, the question is not only what milk costs but what it would mean to lose an animal brought there a thousand years ago.

Keeping Icelandic cattle

Keeping the herd healthy is largely a matter of keeping the outside world out. Iceland permits no cattle imports, and firm disease-prevention rules shield the animals from illnesses that livestock in other countries carry. Day to day, the cows are kept indoors through the long winter on hay with cereal supplements, then turned out to grass in the warmer months; forage crops such as oats, barley, turnips and cabbage bridge the gap between seasons.

Related breeds and crosses

Genetic work names one nearest relative: the Blacksided Troender- and Nordland Cattle of Norway, kin from across the sea. Beyond that single link the Icelandic cow stands alone, for no outside blood has been mixed in for centuries and none can be, while the import ban lasts. Swedish cattle enter the story only once, when a study proposed swapping the native cow for Swedish stock on grounds of cost, a suggestion that met firm objection.

Numbers, conservation and the herd book

Under 80,000 cows make up the whole national population, a modest figure that mirrors the size of the country. There is no import valve: because cattle movement into Iceland is banned, numbers can change only through Icelandic breeding. The breed's standing has been tested in print. A report from the Agricultural University of Iceland judged that Swedish cattle would yield more milk for less outlay, yet opposition held that the native cow is part of the country's identity and deserves to stay. For now the herd carries on much as it has for a thousand years.

From the Icelandic

Questions people ask about Icelandic

Good reading and sources

• Icelandic cattle on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data