Iceland, a tenth of its surface, is covered by
glacial ice, including that of Europe's largest ice cap,
mountainous volcanoes, deafening waterfalls,
electric blue sulfur water, and bubbling mud pools.
Not to mention the extraordinary northern lights
are all part of everyday life here.
Sat on the crack of the Eurasian and American tectonic plates,
it is a hotbed of geothermal and volcanic activity,
and is a world's youngest nation.
Among the 300,000 humans that live here,
there is also a strong 70,000 population of horses,
a world record ratio.
And the title is held by an isolated single breed,
the Icelandic horse.
Horses have played a crucial role in the settlement of people
throughout history, and here is no different.
Used for transportation and communication,
Iceland would have been inhabitable had it not been
for the horse.
Its popularity and symbol of its importance
is still seen in the modern mechanized world.
Evelyn Kuhn is a horse breeder and a trainer
in the north of the island, who understands firsthand
the importance of the Icelandic horse.
My name is Evelyn.
I'm 39 years old, and I'm German.
I came here to Iceland 17 years ago for the first time,
and I just wanted to do a practical training and break
week.
And before that, I wanted to go on a horseback tour,
because that has been my dream since I was a child.
And once on the tour, I was just folding
off with the horse and with my men.
So I ended up here on the farm in the north of Iceland,
in Skara, the other.
And we have now been running here on the farm
since the year 2000, horse riding company.
Yeah, horse riding company.
And we are breeders, but we are just
breeding in a small amount.
We are not following very big aims,
like bringing our horses to world championships,
but we are breeding normal riding horses
that we can use for the riding tours.
And we sell a few horses out of the country,
sometimes gets come and they fall in love with the horse.
And then they take the horse back home.
We have also two little farm cottages
where people can stay for one night or for more nights.
And they can just stay here on the farm
and watching what we're doing with the horses
and taking a ride and just taking a diesel.
When the settlers came here around 870,
they brought all their livestock with them from Norway
or where they came from.
And so they took the horses, they took the sheep, the goats,
the pigs, the dogs, and the cats, like this one at the Hems.
They brought them to Iceland.
And I would say that the horse has been one
of the most important animals they brought to Iceland.
They took them all on the ship.
They came over here with and they
were not supposed to be very, very tall
because the ship, they were not very, very big.
So they had to have the best horses that they knew
that they could survive here on the countryside
and could bring them wherever they wanted to.
And they had to be rather small to save the space.
They have been in a few theories.
What kind of horse it is?
Sometimes it was said they were coming from Norway.
But I think the most modern theory we have now
is that it's a mixture of the shed one pony.
In Europe, we have the standard that a horse that
is smaller than 147 centimeters is a pony.
But the Icelandic horse, the average is about 135.
So that means after European standard,
the horse would be a pony and not a horse.
But this is something that we don't want to hear.
This is something that you should never tell an Icelandic person,
oh, you have a nice little pony.
I think then he would probably get crazy.
I think the reason is that we call it a horse.
It's a very strong horse.
Even if it's rather small, it's very strong,
and it can carry an adult without any problems.
The Icelandic horse has a big meaning
for the settlement of Iceland.
Because if the settlers wouldn't have had the horse,
they could have never gone around the country
or from one area to the other.
So the horse has always been very, very important.
So that's why, in our opinion, the horse is a horse on the pony.
Icelandic horses come in a variety
of different colors and markings.
The color of a horse is said to denote
certain behavioral characteristics.
White, the most balanced and stable of the colors.
Brown, more joyous and sure-footed.
Chestnut, believed to be more lively and courageous.
And black, melancholic and lazy.
There are also mixed colors.
The mixed horses do strangely display
a sharing of the characteristics of the colors it is mixed from.
Even though these horses look like regular horses,
they hold a special talent.
A talent that has been hidden deep in Icelandic culture
for over a thousand years.
There's a very special thing about these horses
because they have five gates or ten have five gates.
That means the normal horse has the walk, the trot and the gallop
or the canter, but the Icelandic horse also has tilt and pace.
And these are gates that we found in the middle age all over Europe.
But it has been bred away there because the people in Europe
they needed very strong horses that could have been used
for drawing the rings into the war.
But here in Iceland it was important that people have horses to travel on
and they needed often to go very long ways.
So they needed a horse that was soft to sit and comfortable to sit.
So that's why we still have these gates.
I think just the isolation made it that we could keep the gates here in Iceland.
Talt is a gate between walk and trot but has varying speed.
It is a four-beated gate where four hoof beats can be heard in a sequence.
The order of the hooves is the same as in a walk.
The hind legs tread further under the body
and the horse's forelocks should flow vigorously.
Talt is a very soft gate.
It's a four-beated gate, I think you say in English.
And that means that always one hoof touches the ground.
So there is no moment where every hoof is up.
So that makes this gate very soft because always have these hooves on the ground.
You're sitting very comfortable and you can just hold a glass of beer
or a glass of milk or whatever and ride on your horse.
And there are a few stories, one story I remember that someone put a cup of tea
on the horse's back before he left the farm
and when he arrived the cup of tea was still there.
The tea was cold but the cup was still on the horse.
I mean that's a legend but it's very soft and comfortable to sit.
And a few years ago the sale of horses was going very well.
So the people then they bred even more.
So that's why we have a lot of horses now.
Maybe more than the country actually needs.
And they're starting to sort out now the horses that they sure know
that they wouldn't have any need for.
So the people are at the moment quite hard in sorting the horses
and then they bring them to the slaughterhouse.
But this is something that has always been common in Iceland to eat horse meat.
That's nothing new.
What does horse meat taste like?
Oh horse meat, it's actually quite good.
If it's an older horse then it's maybe a little bit sweet taste
but normally it's just delicious.
I really like it.
And we eat a lot of it.
You cannot really compare it.
It's different than lamb, it's different than pork.
So you just have to try.
And here in Iceland you really need a horse that you can trust
because we are working with our horses.
We also have sheep and we bring the sheep into the highlands
and in the autumn we have to bring them down.
And we do that with the horses.
And sometimes you have really bad weather conditions
but you need to trust your horse in every situation.
You cannot think about oh is my horse going very well or everything.
You just have to work.
And I think that makes a big difference.
So in that case your horse is your working mate and your friend
that you can just completely trust.
And you just need these horses.
The other horses you just hold out
because there is maybe not really need for them.
I'm top.
I'm top.
I'm top.
I'm top.
I'm top.
