Governing Common Pool Resources for Sustainability: An Institutional Analysis of the Evolving Sheep Grazing Regime in Iceland

• Main Author: Sonya Michelle Morud 1997-
• Other Authors: Háskóli Íslands
• Format: Master Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2021
• Subjects: Umhverfis- og auðlindafræði; Environmental science; Sjálfbærni; Sauðfjárrækt; Iceland
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1946/39830

Sheep grazing has been an important agricultural practice in Iceland since the earliest days of settlement, dating back to the 9th century. As early settlers brought sheep, horses, chicken, and other types of livestock with them, grazing systems have developed throughout common mountain pastures. The Icelandic sheep grazing system, an institutional framework for governance of common-pool resources on mountain pastures, has been manifested and documented in various legal books since the 9th century and continues to be an important institution for this purpose within the country to this day. This study explores how the Icelandic sheep grazing institution has evolved and changed throughout history. By utilizing Elinor Ostrom’s framework for institutional analysis, this study examines main actors as well as how power, rules, and boundaries function within the Icelandic sheep grazing institution. To gather this information, multiple semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with key informants that collectively held extensive, long standing personal experience with the sheep grazing system. Conversations that resulted from structured in-depth interviews revealed that while much of the core of the sheep grazing system detailed in both the old books of law, Grágás and Jónsbók still exist today; however, various changes in the institutions have been made in response to both industrialization and pressures of modern economic systems. The study claims that the Icelandic sheep grazing regime was historically robust when sheep farming in Iceland was a subsistence practice but lacked the ability to respond efficiently when Iceland started to industrialize in the past two centuries. As the historic structure of the Icelandic sheep grazing regime continues to be influential in the current form of the regime, it is imperative to critically think about how the regime can handle future calls to acknowledge problems such as rural decline, land degradation, and lacking conflict-resolution processes.