The short answer is that Iceland was experiencing tremendous soil erosion, and lupine was brought in to hold it together. The longer answer explains why the country was bare enough to need the help.

Why Were Lupines Introduced?

When settlers arrived in the ninth century, roughly two-thirds of Iceland was vegetated, and birch woodland covered perhaps a quarter to a third of the island. These were not tall forests. Icelandic birch rarely grows above about thirteen meters. Still, the settlers cleared what was there for firewood, charcoal, and construction, and the sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs they brought over in open boats kept it from growing back.

Add a harsh climate, steep terrain, and volcanic soil that was loose to begin with, and the topsoil started to leave. By the middle of the twentieth century, only about a quarter of the original vegetation cover remained, and Iceland had a serious erosion problem to manage.

Lupinus nootkatensis first reached Iceland around 1885 as a garden ornamental. Still, the significant arrival that mattered came in 1945, when the Icelandic Forest Service (Skógræktin) brought seeds back from a collecting trip to Alaska.

The lupines offered several advantages:

• Helped stabilize loose ground due to their extensive root systems

• Absorb nitrogen from the atmosphere through bacteria associated with their roots

• Increased nitrogen availability in the soil, which supports vegetation growth

For about three decades, the plant stayed mostly in green spaces around Reykjavík. Organized seed collection began in the 1980s, and nationwide sowing campaigns followed in the 1990s.

How Did Lupines Spread Across Iceland?

Faster than anyone planned. A single lupine plant can set more than two thousand seeds in a season, and those seeds travel by water, wind, erosion, and birds. Members of the public scattered seeds, and officials in the late twentieth century, particularly through organized land reclamation projects, were very efficient at spreading the flowers.

Once established, lupines spread beyond their original planting sites. They grow where other plants struggle, no animal here eats it in quantity, and retreating glaciers keep opening new ground for it. Today it covers roughly 0.4 percent of Iceland's land surface, which sounds modest until you are driving through vast fields of them.

However, their success introduced a different environmental challenge.

Are Lupines Invasive in Iceland?

Officially, yes. Iceland designates only three invasive species, and Lupinus nootkatensis is one of them, alongside cow parsley and heath star moss.

Although lupines helped stabilize degraded land, they also spread into areas containing established native vegetation. Now slow-growing native vegetation, like moss, struggles to compete.

So the trade-off is genuine. Lupin has done real work against erosion on ground that had already lost its vegetation. On ground that still has vegetation, it has meant the loss of plant diversity.

Policy has shifted accordingly. Cultivating non-native species is prohibited above 400 meters and inside protected areas, and official use of lupine in land reclamation ended in 2018, when the Soil Conservation Service described the plant as having finished the job it was brought here to do.

Getting rid of it is another matter. The same deep roots that make lupine effective make it very hard to remove, and local eradication takes three to five years of cutting the plants each June before they seed. Several municipalities in East Iceland organize cutting campaigns and lend out trimmers. However, like many other invasive species, around the globe, it is likely here to stay.