Icelandic Horse

Title

Icelandic Horse

Subject

Photograph

Description

The Icelandic horse is a breed of horse from Iceland that developed from horses taken to Iceland by the original Viking settlers. It is small, often pony-sized, but very hardy.

Pagan Scandinavians ate horse meat as part of their religious observances. Hrafnkels saga tells how he had a horse that he held sacred to Freyr. It is recorded that the eating of horse flesh was banned in Iceland after the conversion to Christianity.

Horses were ridden, although some Vikings were reportedly too large to ride the diminutive horses of the time, such as Göngu-Hrólfr (Walker-Hrolf) who was the first ruler of Normandy.

Horse-fighting was a popular pastime for the Vikings. In a horse fight, two stallions would be set on each other, goaded on by their owners. The Icelandic sagas record a number of horse fights that ended badly, because one owner used his goad to hit the other owner. In the recorded instances, this led to feuds that could last generations.

Creator

Thomas Quine

Source

Wikimedia Commons

Publisher

Wikimedia Commons

Date

30/07/2007

Contributor

Administrator

Rights

By Thomas Quine (originally posted to Flickr as Icelandic Pony) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Format

jpg

Language

English

Type

Image

Coverage

Modern, Iceland

Original Format

photo

Physical Dimensions

1024x768

Files

Icelandic_Pony_Hill.jpg

Geolocation

Social Bookmarking

Comments

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Item Relations

Item: Horse-fights: The brutal entertainment of the Icelanders in the Middle Ages dcterms:relation This Item
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