{"id":7699,"date":"2016-04-20T20:37:05","date_gmt":"2016-04-21T00:37:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=7699"},"modified":"2016-04-20T20:37:05","modified_gmt":"2016-04-21T00:37:05","slug":"norse-horse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=7699","title":{"rendered":"Norse horse"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/7\/7f\/Icelandic_Horses.jpg\" alt=\"\" \/><br \/>\n<em>Icelandic horses at the beginning of summer. Photo credit: Guillame Calas. Creative Commons license.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Fair warning:<\/strong> There won\u2019t be a post on Friday. I have faith in you; somehow you\u2019ll endure.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ll be playing Viking at an odd venue on Friday and through the weekend, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mnhorseexpo.org\">Minnesota Horse Expo<\/a> at the state fairgrounds in St. Paul. The Viking Age Club &#038; Society has been asked to provide context for the Icelandic horse exhibit this year. There will even be fight shows in the arena, though sadly the fighters will be old guys (not me; I\u2019m still not up to that), as our young Vikings aren\u2019t available. In real life, the Vikings would have probably had the stallions themselves fight, using goads on them. It was the Vikings\u2019 favorite sport.<\/p>\n<p>Things I\u2019ve learned about Icelandic horses, mostly through internet research:<\/p>\n<p>\u2022\tIt\u2019s illegal to import any horse into Iceland, even an Icelandic horse. Once an Icelandic horse leaves the island, it must stay away forever. They\u2019re afraid of bringing in exotic diseases or parasites.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022\tIcelandic horses have two extra gaits, which other horses can\u2019t do (and only some Icelandics can do). One is called the <em>t\u00f6lt<\/em>, a \u201cfour-beat lateral ambling gait\u201d said to be \u201ccomfortable and ground-covering.\u201d The other is the <em>skei\u00f0<\/em>, the \u201cflying pace,\u201d \u201cfast and smooth\u201d according to Wikipedia, a \u201ctwo-beat lateral gait.\u201d (<em>Skei\u00f0 <\/em>was also the name of a kind of Viking ship; Erling Skjalgsson owned one of those.)<\/p>\n<p>\u2022\tBreeders of Icelandic horses consider them the purest of the northern breeds.<\/p>\n<p>Author and artist William Morris (1834-1896) made a tour of Iceland with friends in 1871, producing a journal which I consulted (through a kind loan by Dale Nelson) in my research for <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/West-Oversea-Norse-Mystery-Adventure-ebook\/dp\/B00JRIMQZ8\/&#038;tag=brandbooks-20\">West Oversea<\/a><\/em>. He grew very fond of the horse he rode on that tour, and planned to bring it home with him. However it went lame before embarkation, so he took another horse instead. It lived to a good old age and grew very fat on his estate in England.<\/p>\n<p>I shall tell you more about Icelandic horses next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Icelandic horses at the beginning of summer. Photo credit: Guillame Calas. Creative Commons license. Fair warning: There won\u2019t be a post on Friday. I have faith in you; somehow you\u2019ll endure. I\u2019ll be playing Viking at an odd venue on Friday and through the weekend, the Minnesota Horse Expo at the state fairgrounds in St. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=7699\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Norse horse<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[1267,1890,3272,3363],"class_list":["post-7699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-icelandic-horses","tag-minnesota-horse-expo","tag-vikings","tag-william-morris"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7699\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}