Icelandic Horses

 

Icelandic horses are small, but we were severely warned that one  should NEVER
call them ponies! This offends the Icelanders.

Icelandic horses are a famous breed, descended from horses brought with the original Viking settlers beginning over 1000 years ago. They are very protected: every tour guide repeated that any horse that is taken out of the country will never be allowed to return to its native land: the horses live in a bubble to protect them against disease (sound familiar?) Icelandic horses are also bred in other countries, and I think one guide said that in fact there are more of them elsewhere than in Iceland. Many people travel to Iceland in order to ride the horses and to take cross-country riding trips. As I’m not a horse rider, this wouldn’t appeal to me.

On every bus trip from the ship, we saw these horses outside in the fields, and  we also attended a show at a horse farm. The show horses and riders demonstrated the five gaits that these horses can do: the walk, the trot, the canter, the tölt, and the flying pace. The tölt is special to the Icelandic horse and to a small number of other breeds: it is inborn and cannot be taught to a horse that didn’t inherit it. For a complete description of these gaits, see “The 5 gaits of Icelandic Horses.”

Here is a fun fact that I found by googling: 

“The reason the Icelandic horse can tölt and pace is that there was a DMRT3 gene mutation. This gene is responsible for synchronising the left and right sides of the horse’s body, and this change means that the legs can move in new patterns, and also that the horse can run faster without breaking into gallop.” (source)

Blog post and photos © 2021 mae sander.