Yesterday, my Icelandic-horse owning daughter and I spent seven-and-a-half hours at an Icelandic horse event, almost a race. The horses all had names like: Hraunar fra Kirkjuferjuhjaleigu and Galdur frá Auðsholtsháleigu, and I can’t tell you who won. I didn’t think to bring my camera, but it was like this video, except in two respects. The first is that it took place at our local ice rink where they usually play ice hockey — I still don’t understand why this was on ice, but never mind about that, it didn’t affect their performance. The second is that it wasn’t proper racing, it was a knock-out competition, four horses at a time. There were three experts who judged the horses according to ‘how well’ they tølted — the tølt being a smooth and rhythmic ambling gait that Icelandic horses have in addition to being able to walk, trot , canter and gallop. The WEIRD thing about tølting — you can see it in the You-tube video of a tølt race linked above — is that the rider remains seated. The ride is so smooth that they never rise out of the saddle, no matter how fast the horse is going. They look as if they’re driving bumper cars.
We were an audience of one thousand; people had come from all across Scandinavia, but it may not have been for everyone. The organisers ran out of baguettes after half-an-hour and there was VERY loud music while the horses were tølting round the ice rink. Since it’s an annual event, I think next year they might try playing more than just the one cd. We heard YMCA, by The Village People, and ‘Smoke on the Water’ about four times an hour, for seven hours.
‘Smoke on the Water’ : this is Edward Grieg, isn’t it? I thought there weren’t that many people on Earth still listening to that.
Apparently it’s overwhelmingly popular with the Icelandic horse crowd. That’s right, it was originally by Grieg, although the version we were listening to was by either Black Sabbath or Deep Purple.
I hope they stop doing icetolts; it is so hard on the horses’ legs.
Is that so? I see what you mean, I’ll ask my daughter about that. They aren’t planning to stop. I did see two of the horses slip on the ice a little bit.
I see that you ride your horse bitless, which I like very much. I’ll recommend your site to my daughter.
Well, she says that since they only do it once a year the hard ice is really no big deal. She said they’ve been having the event for the past millennium or two in Iceland itself without the horses getting injured. I’m not knowledgeable enough to argue about it, so although I thought you had a good point we’ll have to leave it there. I’m going to put her Icelandic horse blog on my blogroll soon, then you’ll be able to discuss it with her if you’d like to. (It is mainly in Norwegian, but she speaks both languages.)