Page 19 - 2000 ICELAND

Three wonderful young riders demonstrated the wonders of this terrific
horse with his five natural gaits: the walk, the trot, the gallop, the tolt, and

the flying pace. None of these have to be taught to the animal; they come
in his genes. What a wonderful ride he offers, too. The gaits are so smooth,

partly also because his legs move differently from other horses in that the
legs on one side move in conjunction. When put into the faster gaits (the

tolt and flying pace), he lifts his front legs quite high (like a hackney horse)

and looks like a little wind-up toy he moves so fast.

It’s amazing to ride these gaits too because they are so much smoother than
American saddle horses. We know this up close and personal because they

arranged to hire horses for anyone who wanted to take an evening ride and
several of us started out about 9 PM (still broad open daylight with sunshine

of course). Others in our group rode out at l0:30 PM and it was still bright.

The Icelanders are quite safety conscious so we had to wear helmets on the
ride, but that was good since they did take us through all the paces and we

were moving quite rapidly along. We forded a stream on horseback and the

water came above the horses’ bellies so our boots got wet. They led us
along grassy pathways where we got to “feel” for ourselves why these little

horses are so popular! We are Icelandic horse fans forever!

Supper had come between the horse show and the horseback ride, so about
ll:00 PM, we strolled over to the showers connected with the “sundlaug”

and had the gang showers to ourselves. Our shelter for this night was the
Steinstadtskoli (the Stein town elementary school).

There’s a wonderful practice in Iceland of turning the elementary schools

into “summer hotels” since they are empty of children at that time and

there is a great need for tourist accommodations.

Five of us bunked in each classroom; Kay, Pat, Lynn and I were joined by an
English-speaking French-Swiss lady, Rosemary. She had worked for the Swiss

government in Havana, Washington, and New York, and had very good
Spanish and English.