The Northern European short-tailed sheep are a group of traditional sheep breeds or types found in northern Europe, mainly in the British Isles, Scandinavia, Greenland and the area around the Baltic. They are thought to be derived from the first sheep brought to Europe by early farmers, and for thousands of years, they were the only type of sheep kept in northern Europe. They are hardy sheep, adapted to harsh environments, but they are small and have been replaced in most areas with later types of larger, long-tailed sheep.
Characteristics
These sheep are generally small and have characteristic short “fluke-shaped” tails, broad at the base and tapering to a hair-covered tip. Their tails typically have 13 vertebrae compared with over 20 for other sheep; in most types, the individual tail vertebrae are also shorter than those of long-tailed sheep. Their faces and legs are free of wool. The horns vary between breeds and often within them: they may be horned in both sexes, horned only in the male or polled in both sexes. Some types (such as Manx Loaghtan and Hebridean) can have more than one pair of horns.
They may be patterned or solid-coloured (commonly white, black or moorit – brown), and white markings may also occur over other colouration. Some (such as Shetland and Icelandic) include a very wide range of colours and patterns. Some types moult naturally in spring, allowing their fleece to be rooed (plucked) rather than shorn. Twin births are frequent, with some (such as the Finnsheep, Romanov and Icelandic) often giving birth to litters of three, four or even more lambs. Breeding is usually strongly seasonal, with lambs being born in spring or early summer.
Most types are very hardy and agile, being well adapted to eating rough vegetation in wet and cool climates, and they often have a strong preference for browsing trees and shrubs rather than grazing shorter vegetation. The North Ronaldsay is adapted to living largely on seaweed.
History
The first sheep brought to Europe by the earliest farmers are thought to have been short-tailed sheep. Initially, in the Neolithic Age, these were small, double-coated, naturally moulting, brown sheep, of which the Soay sheep is believed to be a relict. By the Iron Age, these had been replaced throughout northern and western Europe by somewhat larger sheep, still short-tailed, but with a fleece of more uniform texture and variable in colour.
Sheep brought later from southern Europe were long-tailed, white-fleeced and larger. These displaced the short-tailed sheep in most areas, and by the early nineteenth century, short-tailed sheep remained only in remoter parts of the west and north, including Scandinavia, the area around the Baltic, Ireland, Cornwall, the Highlands of Scotland, and various islands. Long-tailed sheep then spread into most of these areas too, and by the early twentieth century short-tailed sheep were restricted to very remote islands and mountains.
From the mid-nineteenth century (and especially after the middle of the twentieth century), many of the surviving short-tailed breeds became recognised as worthy of preservation for curiosity, for cultural reasons, as ornamental animals, or for conservation of genetic diversity.