The Icelandic horse

The five gaits

Most horses walk, trot and canter. The Icelandic horse does those three and then two more, and the fourth is the one people travel to feel.

• Walk, trot, canter/gallop — the three every breed has.
• Tölt — a four-beat gait with at least one hoof always on the ground. No moment of suspension means no bounce: the rider stays level while the horse moves quickly. It is the reason the breed was bred the way it was, on a island of rough ground and long distances.
• Skeið / flugskeið, the flying pace — a two-beat lateral gait, both legs on one side moving together, used in short bursts. Not every horse has it, and the ones that do are prized.

The one-way border

Iceland has kept the breed isolated since 982, and the modern rules go further than the old ones: no foreign-born horse may be imported, and an exported Icelandic horse may never return. Competition horses flown out to Europe do not come home afterwards.

The reason is disease, not sentiment. A thousand years of isolation means the herd is virtually free of the equine illnesses common elsewhere — and equally, has no resistance to them. One returning animal could carry something the whole population has never met. The rule looks extreme until you consider what it protects.

Where you actually see them

You do not need a tour. They are working livestock, kept in open fields across the whole country, and you will pass them from the car on almost every rural road — the length of Route 1, all around the Golden Circle, and thickly through Eyjafjörður near Akureyri. In autumn they come down off the highlands in the réttir, the annual round-up, which is a working event rather than a show.

One driving note: livestock near the road is normal here, and horses spook. Slow down, do not sound the horn, and never stop on the carriageway to photograph them — see driving in Iceland.