Lögberg-Heimskringla - 18.06.2004, Qupperneq 15

Lögberg-Heimskringla • Föstudagur 18. júní 2004 • 15
Karen Olsen with her Icelandic stallion Ómur frá Brún.
Icelandic horses in Utah
Steinþór Guðbjartsson
Herriman, UT
Karen Olsen sure looks
Icelandic, with her blonde hair
and blue eyes. At any rate, her
horses are all Icelandic. “I
simply want the best,” she
says.
Eric and Karen Olsen live
in Herriman, just southwest of
Salt Lake City, Utah. There
they have a stallion, four
mares and two foals.
‘“You’ll get a horse when
you buy your own,’ my dad
used to say to me when I was a
little girl,” Karen recalls.
When she was 21, the dream
becarne a reality. Karen’s first
horse was a tall, strong Arabi-
an, but she says that she had
problems controlling him and
she eventually got injuried. “I
was tired of nervous horses,”
she says, and adds that she got
her first Icelandic horse from
British Columbia, Canada
about six years ago.
“I wanted a horse that I
could ride in water and up in
the mountains,” she says.
Karen’s first nrare was Sól
from Miðhjáleiga in Rangár-
vallasýsla, but then she got
Vindhviða í'rom Rauðastaður.
Órnur frá Brún is her stallion,
and then there are the mares
Perla and Gola frá Skriðu;
Karen got the latter one from
Iceland in March. “I want to
build up an Icelandic breed,
and I want to get a competition
going and a clinic,” she says,
adding that she would like to
have Sigurbjörn Bárðarson, or
“Diddi,” to evaluate her hors-
es. Diddi has been among the
tóp riders in Iceland for many
years and he runs a breeding
facility in Iceland.
“We have two racetracks
here in the area,” Karen says
and adds that Sigrún Brynjars-
ddóttir will be training her
horses soon. “She is a very
well respected trainer in the
U.S. and helpful to me every
year,” Karen says.
The parents of her stallion
are famous horses in Iceland
— Kveikur from Miðsitja and
Ósk frorn Brún, first-prize
horses. “It is hard to ftnd a
stallion with that kind of pedi-
gree,” Karen says. The par-
ents of all her mares are prize
horses.
According to Karen, a
first-prize stallion from Ice-
land costs between $20,000
and $30,000 (U.S.) and com-
petition mares in Iceland
about $12,000 to $15,000.
“This is our,life, I love the
Icelandic horses.” But she is
not as Icelandic as she
appears to be. “I just look Ice-
landic. I ant half Norwegian
and half Swedish, but I gotta
have some Icelandic blood
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE INDIANAPOLIS
COLTS/A.J. MACHT
Robert Morris at the Colts
2004 MiniCamp.
Famous
footballer
in Spanish
Fork
Linebacker Robert Samuel
Morris, of the NFL’s Indi-
anapolis Colts, is of Icelandic
descent and has a house in
Spanish Fork, Utah.
Rob Morris was born in
1975 and has played with the
Colts in the NFL since 2000.
His maternal great-grandpar-
ents were Eyjólfur Eiríksson
from Nýibær in Rangárval-
lasýsla and Jarbrúður Runólfs-
dóttir from Mýrarholt in Bor-
somewhere,” Karen says, garfjörður. Eyjólfur emigrated
adding that she grew up in St. lo Utah in 1886 and Jarþrúður
Paul, Minnesota. the following year.
PHOTO: STEINÞÓR GUÐBJARTSSON
www.icelandnatvrally.corn
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Larry Finnson
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