Festuca rubra ssp. rubra is one of the more frequent introduced plants in Svalbard and mainly confined to settlements, road verges, refuse tips, and meadow fragments by cabins. The plants confirmed as this subspecies are strictly ruderal, at present common in Longyearbyen (due to attempts to make the town 'green' and to re-vegetate the road verges by grass seed). Elsewhere it has been found in numerous mining settlements and by cabins, but probably not persisting.
There are, however, plants native to Svalbard that may belong within this subspecies. Some populations in bird-cliffs along the west coast of Spitsbergen have glabrous lemmas and distinct awns. They do not conform to the obviously native ssp. richardsonii. These plants have not been well studied.