Why I Care About Icelandic Horseback Riding

Really, with all that is going on in the world today, why am I taking up bandwidth on the Internet to write about riding Icelandic horses?

Because I feel it is important.

The relationship between man and horse seems trivial only when we forget our history of reliance on the horse. Until less than 100 years ago, we were dependent on the horse for most of our transportation, our farming, and, as we are learning from books such as Seabiscuit, our entertainment and sport. I clearly remember draft horses from my own childhood during World War II when engines and mechanical vehicles were being shunted to "the war effort".

It's a two-way relationship. Just as we were dependent on the horse, it was on us. Now that I care for horses at home, I am keenly aware how fragile they are, how susceptible they are to colic, diseases, injury and pedators.

Man's dependence on the horse was extreme in Iceland as perhaps nowhere else in the world. The horse litterally pulled the Icelanders through the first settlement in 873 until the beginning of World War II when Iceland became important enough to the rest of the world to become mechanized.

But they still kept the horse.  Many, many of them.

I sense that to Icelanders the sight of the horse and, certainly, the experience of riding one, is a celebration of their very survival as a people.   

What draws me to the horse is the closeness I feel to it when I am riding one. And the closeness to a part of my self that I otherwise don't have.