Reykjavík Grapevine - 26.08.2016, Blaðsíða 14

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The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 13 — 2016
14
If you want to start a fight in Iceland,
call their horses ponies. When I slipped
up and did just that, I was met with, “A
pony couldn’t do what that horse did.”
And while the breed tends to fall in
the pony height range, standing under
14.2 hands, I walked away from my ride
in absolute agreement that an Icelan-
dic horse is no mere pony. This I will
defend until my dying day.
Icelandic horses are well-known for
their distinctive traits, including their
ability to perform an additional gait
unseen in other breeds, known as the
tölt. Any interaction would have been
cause for celebration but I desired more
than your run-of-the-mill trail ride. I
used to ride both Western and English
and was on my university’s equestrian
team. And because the breed is so dis-
tinctly recognizable, I wanted a bit of
a riding and a history lesson mixed
in. The caveat is that, similar to the
majority of my significant life events,
I had decided to save my most sought
after Icelandic experience for the day
before my departure. Worth mention-
ing as well was my lack of transport
out of the city center. Luckily, I had
someone working the inside. A true-
blue Icelander to help me out (and by
true-blue I mean, half Icelandic, half
Belgian, and entirely willing to placate
this foreigner’s dawdling tendencies).
Fellow Grapevine intern Johánna set
me up with a friend who was open-
ing up a barn with her boyfriend just
outside of Reykjavík. Part of the deal
is that they’ll come pick you up from
a location of your choosing and bring
you to their Kópavogur stables, rough-
ly twenty minutes outside the city. So
with less than twenty-four hours left
in the country, I was whisked away to
experience what so few riders get to.
Mane and tail-fluff
Oh Icelandic horses, how do I love
thee, let me count the ways. I can say
with complete objectivity and after
thorough research spanning an en-
tire three-hour period, that Icelandic
horses are superior to other horses
in temperament, work ethic, Norse
mythological references and, chief
among all else, mane and tail-fluff. I
have soliloquies at the ready if ever the
topic of Icelandic horses arises. And
although the breed is entirely worthy
of the extended praise I have just dis-
pensed, it’s unfair to say the experi-
ence would have been as remarkable if
JoJo (Johánna’s office moniker) hadn’t
connected me with Gunnar Kjartans-
son’s Gáski Horse Center. I had hoped
for more than a trail ride but, seeing
as it was the day before my flight off
the island, I would have counted my
lucky stars to have been able to merely
sit on an Icelandic horse. Well, María
Tinna Árnadóttir, one of the barn’s
head guides, saw to it I was practically
given a riding lesson, while Gunnar
Ingimundarson, a friend and partner
at the farm, regaled us with tales of
the horses and their place in Iceland’s
history.
The Gunnars
People always tell you that it’s impos-
sible to be famous in Iceland. And I
just grinned widely as I sat there lis-
tening to them speak of how a friend’s
son was playing for Iceland in the Eu-
ropean Championships. There was a
Gunnar to my right and a Gunnar to
my left. Right-Gunnar conjured a gui-
tar out of nowhere and began singing
Icelandic folk songs. In that idyllic at-
mosphere, I think I wasn’t entirely to
blame for losing all sense of reason
and seriously contemplating purchas-
ing this beautiful, exceptionally fluffy
bay, Blackbeard. (In the end, shipping
him back to California would probably
have been too much of an ordeal for
the poor guy.)
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GPV.IS/HOR
Words
KELLEY REES
Photo
ART BICNICK
LIFE
A Day Out with the
Icelandic Horse
Who You
Callin'
Pony?
Now that early elec-
tions have been all
but established,
Iceland’s political
parties are shift-
ing into campaign
high gear. But with elections about
ten weeks away, some kind of mira-
cle would need to happen to change
the way polls have been trending for
months now. If elections were held
today, the only two parties that
could form a ruling coalition would
be the Pirate Party and the Indepen-
dence Party—and the Pirate Party
has already ruled out forming any
kind of coalition with the Indepen-
dence Party. Which might mean a
three-party coalition. Or who knows,
maybe a joint coalition of all parties
and no more of this petty, sports-
informed system of reactive politics
and—oh, who are we kidding.
In bathroom news, the secondary
school Verzlunarskóla Íslands, fol-
lowing a proposal from the school’s
Feminist Society, has done away
with labeling their bathrooms as
being for male and female staff
and students. In their place, all bath-
rooms are simply labelled “WC.” This
follows the lead already taken by at
least one primary school, and the City
of Reykjavík has been considering
the idea of making bathrooms and
changing rooms at city pools gender-
less. It’s a fortunate thing, then, that
we do not live in a country where any-
one is proposing some kind of bath-
room police, as we’ve seen in some
states in America. Although this does
give American Christian conserva-
tives another reason to hate Iceland,
really, who wants them here anyway?
-PF
NEWS IN
BRIEF
CONT.
You can turn your
bathroom into your
own personal
lighthouse with the
Illumibowl toilet
seat light