Pretty much anywhere on Earth with standing water and a bit of warmth, sooner or later you’ll hear that unmistakable whine of a mosquito hunting for an ankle. There are no mosquitoes in Iceland. It’s one of the only inhabited places on the planet where, officially, not a single mosquito lives. And the strange part isn’t just that they’re absent — it’s that nobody can fully explain why.
One mosquito, one plane, one jar of alcohol
This story even has a main character. Back in the 1980s, Icelandic biologist Gísli Már Gíslason found a mosquito inside the cabin of a plane. The plane had just landed in Iceland. He caught it, dropped it in alcohol, and sealed it in a jar. According to Snopes, that specimen is still, to this day, the only confirmed mosquito ever found in the country. It flew in by plane, ended up pickled in a jar, and that was that — no offspring, no colony, nothing.
However, the telling part is that it’s not because mosquitoes can’t reach Iceland. They do, constantly, hitching rides on ships, planes, and gusts of wind. In fact, the problem is that once they land, they simply can’t get a foothold. It’s as if Iceland has an invisible “no bloodsuckers allowed” sign hanging over the whole island.
Mosquitoes in Iceland: Why Can’t They Put Down Roots?
This is where it gets genuinely interesting, because science has theories here, not a tidy final answer. The leading one points to Iceland’s unstable oceanic climate. Instead of one long, steady winter, the island typically goes through three separate freeze-thaw cycles a year. Mosquito eggs need the ice to melt in a predictable rhythm to complete their life cycle. Therefore, that constant back-and-forth seems to catch them off guard every single time.
What makes it odd is that the explanation doesn’t fully close the case. Still, Greenland, Norway, Denmark and Scotland all have plenty of harsh, cold climates of their own — and mosquitoes thrive there without any trouble. The Icelandic Institute of Natural History has pointed out that it’s not a lack of ponds or puddles to lay eggs in, either. In fact, Iceland has standing water to spare. There’s even a separate hypothesis floating around about something peculiar in the chemistry of Iceland’s volcanic water and soil, though for now that remains an unconfirmed guess.
Iceland isn’t the only Nordic country with oddities like this. We’ve also written about why, in Longyearbyen, in the Norwegian Arctic, it was against the rules to die there for years.
A truce that might be running out of time
Here’s the less fun part. According to Gíslason himself, Iceland’s average temperature has risen by nearly 1 degree Celsius over the past two decades because of climate change. Warming could keep going, bringing more stable winters with fewer freeze-thaw cycles. If that happens, the very conditions keeping mosquitoes out today could disappear. The biologist himself warned that, if the trend continues, Iceland might not stay this entomological oddity for much longer.
So if you ever travel to Iceland and notice your ankles are suspiciously bite-free, it’s not your imagination. Mosquitoes in Iceland remain, for now, one of nature’s rare mercies for its visitors against that universal annoyance. Don’t get too comfortable, though: midges and ticks are doing just fine over there.