This book is about Icelandic sagas and horses. The author tells how she first became interested in studying the sagas during university years, and took her husband to Iceland to rent out a summerhouse one year, where they would find solitude to work and write. She fell in love with the land, and its distinctive horses. I didn’t know how remarkably difference Icelandic horses are from other breeds (Arabians are too, in different ways). Also very different is how they are raised and trained, and the attitude of people towards them in Iceland. After visiting several times the author, a moderately experienced rider, decided she wanted to buy two Icelandic horses to take home to America. She returned alone specifically for this purpose. Which was made difficult by the fact that after some fifteen years spent studying the language, her conversational skills were still very basic. Her riding skills were above beginner level- but she wasn’t at all trained how to handle an Icelandic horse. She traveled around and rode many different horses to try them out, but couldn’t find one that she really connected with. And in spite of constantly repeating the phrase popular in Iceland that color doesn’t matter (a horse’s personality, willingness, smoothness of gait, etc being far more important in defining its quality) she kept being drawn to horses that had an attractive appearance (but other serious flaws that revealed upon handling). Then there was the tricky social aspect- her host expected her to purchase the mare he recommended (being known as a fine judge of horses) and was offended when she kept looking around. It was all very interesting to read about. The first half of the book was a bit less intriguing for me- having lots of asides about the language, and retelling bits of sagas that related to what the author was experiencing or thinking about. I liked it much better the further she got into testing out the horses, learning about what defined the Icelandic horse, trying to improve her skills in riding them, and so on. More about this was much to my liking. A great book.
Rating: 4/5
230 pages, 2001
2 Responses
Interesting! I hadn’t known Iceland horses were different, but I did some googling.
I can kind of see why she she was drawn to colors, I never heard of this before:
> but the rarest color you can find is litföróttur. This roughly translates to “color travelers,” a very good description of this special color variation. If a horse has this color, it will change colors multiple times a year, often resulting in a splattered in-between color.
Did she end up finding horses to buy? I bet shipping them back to the US would make a whole second book!
Wow, I didn’t know about the color-changing ones. There’s a betta fish type that does that- it’s called marbling. I’ve seen people share pictures of them on forums- you’d never guess it was the same fish, months later. It never occurred to me that other animals could have that trait too, but makes sense!
Yes, at the very end she decided which horse to buy. I would really like to read another book about her taking the horses home (she actually got two) and her continued growth in learning to ride better. She’s written a lot of other books, but it doesn’t look like any is a sequel to this one.