Jóhanna Bergmann Þorvaldsdóttir is an Icelandic farmer responsible for saving the

Icelandic goat The Icelandic goat ( ), also known as the 'settlement goat' (''Capra hircus''), is an ancient breed of domestic goat believed to be of Norwegian origin and dating back to the settlement of Iceland over 1100 years ago. This breed of goat was on th ...

through breeding them at her farm, Háafell in

Borgarbyggð Borgarbyggð () is a municipality in the west of Iceland. The biggest township in the municipality is Borgarnes, with a population of 1,887 inhabitants. Other densely populated areas in the municipality include Bifröst, Hvanneyri, Kleppjárnsr ...

Iceland Iceland is a Nordic countries, Nordic island country between the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between North America and Europe. It is culturally and politically linked with Europe and is the regi ...

Career

Jóhanna Bergmann Þorvaldsdóttir runs the Háafell farm in

. Prior to running the farm, she was a

nurse Nursing is a health care profession that "integrates the art and science of caring and focuses on the protection, promotion, and optimization of health and human functioning; prevention of illness and injury; facilitation of healing; and alle ...

, although it had been her family's farm for three generations. Jóhanna has raised six children on the farm. Since 2000, she has been breeding the

in an effort to save it from extinction. Through her work, the farm has also become known as the Icelandic Goat Conservation Center, and is the only goat breeding farm in Iceland. To fund the ongoing work, she organised a crowd funding campaign on

Kickstarter Kickstarter, PBC is an American Benefit corporation, public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York City, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative project ...

in 2012 in order to expand the facilities available at the farm. Jóhanna provided 20 goats to the production of the ''

Game of Thrones ''Game of Thrones'' is an American Fantasy television, fantasy Drama (film and television), drama television series created by David Benioff and for HBO. It is an adaptation of ''A Song of Ice and Fire'', a series of high fantasy novels by ...

'' fourth season episode "

The Laws of Gods and Men "The Laws of Gods and Men" is the sixth episode of the fourth season of HBO's medieval fantasy television series ''Game of Thrones'', and the 36th episode overall. Directed by Alik Sakharov and written by Bryan Cogman, the episode first aired ...

". Over time, Jóhanna has created a market for goat products within Iceland. In 2014, the farm was threatened with

foreclosure Foreclosure is a legal process in which a lender attempts to recover the balance of a loan from a borrower who has Default (finance), stopped making payments to the lender by forcing the sale of the asset used as the Collateral (finance), coll ...

. In response, Jóhanna organised a further campaign, this time on

IndieGoGo Indiegogo is an American crowdfunding website founded in 2008 by Danae Ringelmann, Slava Rubin, and Eric Schell. Its headquarters are in San Francisco, California. The site is one of the first sites to offer crowd funding. Indiegogo allows peo ...

, to raise the 10 million

Icelandic krona Icelandic refers to anything of, from, or related to Iceland and may refer to: *Icelandic people *Icelandic language *Icelandic orthography *Icelandic cuisine See also * Icelander (disambiguation) * Icelandic Airlines, a predecessor of Icelandai ...

needed to keep the farm open. By the time of the campaign, the numbers of the Icelandic goat had increased from 90 to around 820, with half located on Jóhanna's farm. If the funding was not found, it would have resulted in the goats being slaughtered. After the success of the campaign, Jóhanna has looked to making the farm self sufficient by producing her own goat cheese year round.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bergmann Thorvaldsdottir, Johanna Living people Johanna Bergmann Thorvaldsdóttir Mammal conservation Johanna Bergmann Thorvaldsdóttir Johanna Bergmann Thorvaldsdóttir Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century women farmers 21st-century farmers