Breed History

The Icelandic Sheepdog is a variant of the nordic spitz breed, and has long been considered to be one of the oldest breeds of canine. Some statements, I've read trace their heritage all the way back to the time of the Danish Maglemose culture during the stone age(6000 BC), in most cases 874 AD is the date when some of it's first ancestors were introduced to Iceland, brought over by the Viking settlers who inhabited the land at the time. The breed was hardy and quick to adapt to the colder climates and mountainous landscapes making these an invaluable asset to icelandic farms and ranches throughout the years. Herding dogs by nature the icelandics were used to round up flocks of sheep and other livestock, in order to move them either from pasture to pasture, or up to the mountains during the summer and then back down to the farm come fall time. They were also known to help protect sheep either from some of the larger birds that would dive and pick at the herd, or by retrieving them from under the snow by using there keen sense of smell to track the buried animal. Using it's bark to herd, the breed is not known to bite or be aggressive, has little to no hunting instinct in their nature, and will naturally herd livestock and sheep with little or no formal training. The dual layered fur coat made them excellent dogs for the colder climates, keeping them both dry and warm in the snowy regions.

During the last two centuries the odds where stacked against the breed. Most fell victim to either cross-breeding, wide spread hunger and viral epidemics, occurring on a number of occasions. The most recently recorded was a viral disease in the early twentieth century, thought to be distemper, wiped out nearly 75% of all of the breed living in Iceland. Only secluded dogs in the far northern and eastern regions of the country were spared.

Do to this epidemic the breed was on the brink of extinction, with only a few dogs left in remote areas, the breed was unlikely to survive. As the story goes in the mid'30s an english gentleman by the name of Mark Waston, who had a passion for the Icelandics, realized the crisis the breed faced. He traveled most of Iceland seeking out the purest of specimens, in hopes to preserve and rebuild the breed. In the 1950's he, and one of his colleagues, Páll Pálson, traveled to North America with their chosen companions, and established Wensum kennel in Nicasio, California. Unfortunately a few years after they had been established a fire destroyed all of the dogs and the kennel they had worked so hard to build. Retrieving the two dogs Waston had left in Iceland he went back to England to try again.

In 1967 a lady named Sigridur Pétursdottir combined with the help of Watson and Pálson established the "frá Olafsvellir" Kennel, which went on to become the first kennel for the registered breeding of Icelandics. The Icelandic Kennel Club was founded by Sigridur Pétursdottir in 1969, she issued pedigree icelandics with a registration number prefixed by the year issued. Since than a number of other groups have been established in order to ensure this amazing breed would continue to thrive, and not have to endure the hardships and risks it had encountered in past years. In the pedigree's we find today, nearly all the Icelandics can be traced back to some of the originating breeders who establish their kennels from dogs they obtained from frá Olafsvellir kennels.

With only a thousand to two thousand dogs worldwide, the breed took some time to start in North America, with only a handful of dogs existing through the seventies and eighties it wasn't until the nineties that people started hearing about The Icelandic Sheepdog. In 1997 the Icelandics Sheepdog Association of America was formed, as the breed finally got a foothold in the North American Continent.