News - January until June 2009

I just want to send a short summer greeting from the Icelandic summer heat (23° Celsius).
The high season has already started and there is a lot to do these days. We have continued our riding tour program and will ride up to the highlands in a few days. Beside the longer riding tours we have a lot of travellers who just stop for a 1-4 hour ride. All this keeps us very busy.

As soon as I have the time I will put up a new gallery with plenty of beautiful summer pictures and a new newspage.

We have been waiting for Kvika to give birth for the last two weeks. Finally, in the night of June, 16th it was her turn.
Bella and Anna Heiða spent the night outside to watch Kvika who was getting nervous at around midnight. They woke me up at around 03.00 am and then we could watch this "wonder of life" together. It took Kvika about 40 long and heavy minutes to give birth to her big black foal. The beautiful stallion is after the 1st prize stallion Tindur frá Varmalæk.
You can see some pictures of these impressive moments in our gallery. There are also some pictures of Bleikskjónas foal, a beautiful yellow dun stallion after Roði frá Garði, which was born on June 19th.

Last but not least some links to the new "Kvika giving birth" videos on Youtube:
Wonder of Life - From birth to the first steps. Enjoy!

It´s done!

Welcome!

Standing up

First steps

The riding tour season has started in the beginning of June.
Our new program "Ride and discover" has been run for the first time. This program gives the opportunity to go on daily riding tours and to have free time during the afternoon to go for sightseeing or to take part on other kinds of recreation. A few pictures of this week have been uploaded in the gallery.
Click here!

We have been exited about our mare Kvika giving birth to her foal. We have been waiting for many days and finally on June, 16th during the night she gave birth to a beautiful black stallion after Tindur frá Varmalæk. Ones more we have been so lucky to watch her giving birth and pictures and videoclips will be downloaded soon.

This week our mare Veiga has been shown at the breeding competition in Sauðárkrókur. She was ridden by Bjarni Jonasson and got a total score of 8,13 which means that she has reached 1st prize. She got 7,91 for confirmation(it was 7,98 last year) and 8,27 for riding abilities. For tolt, pace, and temperament she got 8,5. For trott, form under rider, walk, slow tolt and slow gallop she scored 8.
We are very satisfied with the result and proud of course ;-)
Veigas mother is our old mare Perla, her sire the well known "Landsmót star 2002" Adam frá Ásmundarstöðum. Veiga is enjoying her time off now and will soon meet the stallion Froði frá Staðatungu.

Futher on is to say that the lambs are all born and the riding sseason starts with full power next monday with the programs "Ride and Discover" and "spring awakening".

You find some pictures of the breeding show in the gallery.
Click here!

More than 100 lambs have been born here during the last two weeks. It is always a lot of joy to welcome the baby sheep, but it is also a lot of work too.
The weather conditions have been very bad and I don´t remember a lamb season with such steady bad weather. We had a few days heavy rain which changed the fields into lakes and the ways into mudpools. The last two days it has been cold and snowing with a very strong storm. Our sheep are all giving birth outside which means that we have to be awake all time to get the new borns inside.
Today happened an amazing thing: a three year old sheep gave birth to FOUR lambs!!! This has never happend before and we were very surprized. We hope they will all grow up. There are small but seem to be alright.
But it is not only sheep giving birth these days. We have already five colourful foals tolting together in the pasture. After Silgja gave birth to the first one, it were Maistjarna, Mýsla,Vordís and Farsæl who were next. Pictures have not been taken yet as all time goes to the sheep at the moment.

Júlíus and me went to have a look at the foal which was born yesterday as the first foal of the year. We were so exited that I have to admit that we forgot to look if it is male or female. But to be honest: it does not really matter because a baby (foal) is always a miracle. Have a look at the pictures we took! As always at this time of the year the pictures are not very colourful ;-)

I want to put the link to my video of Kvika giving birth here once more. For these who have not seen it yet. Almost 300.000 have already watched it on Youtube!
Click here to see the miracle of life!

The day today did not just welcome us with new fallen snow but also with the fact that our yellow dun mare Silgja had given birth to this years first foal. We do not know yet if the little palomino horse is a male or female but we will have a closer look tomorrow.
We are also waiting for the first lambs to arrive and the exitement is getting more and more every day, especially for Júlíus.

Iceland is electing a new government today after the big political collaps in January. We went on horseback to the polling station and hopefully made the cross on the right place. We were not the only people riding to elect, there were other groups tolting to the station. It was a nice atmosphare and hopefully a good start into a bright future...

Spring seems to arrive these days. The snow has almost disappeared and the ditches are full with water.
This kind of weather always follows a lot of mud because the underground is still frozen and the water can not flow away. But after a few more days with sun and mild temperatures everything will dry.
Júlíus - of course- enjoys the mud a lot. It is so much fun to mess around in the muddy ditches ;-)
I took a few pictures today when we were outside looking for something green. You can help us to look, just click here!

We wish you all a Happy Easter with more sunshine and warmer temperatures as we have today;-)

We have been very busy during the last weeks training our youngsters and taking part on all the social commitments we are supposed to. The lamb season is coming soon and after that the riding season is starting.
So far we are still waiting for some mild and sunny days but do not give up the hope of nice weather during the next weeks.

Last week I took a lot of pictures while I showed the stud to our guests. Have a look at the gallery to join our visit to the youngsters. The snow you see on the pictures melted completely during the last two days. The temperature rised up to 10°Celsius!
Enjoy!

We got great news yesterday: our mare Ljóma frá Lýtingsstöðum has won the 4-gait competition on the first Icecompetition held in Finland.
1.200 people watched the competition in Helsinki and many other people in front of the finish TV. We are very proud of Ljómas success. Her owner has been competing successfully on her before on several finish championships.
We sold Ljóma in 2006 after she has been in use for some riding tours during the summer. I´m sure that some guests remember this nice palomino mare ;-).

The winter is not over yet and the weather forecast promises more frost and snow for the next week. Nevertheless there was a light smell of spring in the air today.
After another snow storm went over our valley during the last night we had a lot of sunshine and mild temperatures during the day. You could almost see the snow melting in the sun.
We used the good weather for a special training for the stabled horses. We drove them free running along our road and they loved it a lot. They speeded up and galloped almost the whole time. Afterwards they took a bath in the snow and dried the hair in the sun. They really enjoyed it. Our stallion Jörfi can of course not run free among the mares and geldings so we took him afterwards along with the quad. He is doing it very well and it is fun to watch him trotting proudly beside the vehicle.

The interview which was taken with us in January for the documentary film about the master competition "KS deild", was shown on TV last week. The film was repeated two times and almost everyone in Skagafjörður seems to have seen it so we got a lot of nice reactions about it.

This week the first guests found their way to us. They wanted to experience the Icelandic winter (which was no problem as they got all kind of weather: snow, storm and sunshine) and also wanted to visit the family of their mare Hulda. Hulda is a daughter of our breeding mare Drottning, which is also mother of Jörfi and Kvika. We had a look at many of Huldas family members and took hundreds of pictures. I will show a few of them later in the gallery.

Our puppies are growing and enjoy themselfs a lot. They are very kind and lovely and we are glad to have them around!

We have enlarged our program with a 2-day-trip into the highlands including an overnight stay in a mountain cabin. The trip can be booked seperately as a 2-day-trip from July 2nd - July 3rd or can be integrated into our "Ride and Discover" week from 29.06.-05.07.2009.
The tour leads us to the "top of the world" all the way to the new mountain cabin Hraunlækur just above the magnificent canyon of the glacial river and close to the glacier Hófsjökull. It will take us about 5 hours to ride to the cabin. Every guest has two riding horses for the tour. The horse which is not ridden at the time is taken along as a "handhorse" which means that every rider ponies his second horse beside the riding horse. This is the oldest way of travelling on horseback on Iceland and an amazing way to ride without any stress through the uninhabited highlands. Our horses are used to this and we take good care to choose a matching couple for every rider regarding his experience and the horses harmony.
We have been riding twice to Hraunlækur last year and spent unforgetable hours in this cosy and well equipped hut with the panoramical view.
If you are interested in this tour please send us an e-mail and ask for further information.

This tour suits well for a short riding adventure on a journey around Iceland!

Today is "Bolludagur" (= Bun Day) when the children get up early to spank their parents with a colourful wand and call: "Bolla, bolla" (bun, bun). During the day they recieve as many bolla (cream and jam filled buns) as they have spanked their parents. Funny (and sweet) tradition :-)
The day tomorrow is "Sprengidagur" (=bursting day) when everyone eats salted meat with split-pea-soup, potatos and turnips. You can imagine why the day is called sprengidagur, isn´t it?
Last not but least we celebrate Öskudagur (= Ash Wednesday) when children get dressed up in costumes, banging "the cat out of the tonn" (a tonn filled with sweets, NOT with a cat!) and sing in shops to get sweets. An older tradition is to hang a small bag with ash on other people clothes.
Today left two horses our farm and they are now on the way to Sweden. We hope that our beautiful mare Vorsól and the handsome gelding Kiljan will arrive safely in Sweden and bring a lot of enjoyment to their new owners.
We have been very busy during the last weeks and worked a lot with our young horses. Our swedish trainee Caroline helped us to prepare the youngsters on the ground and ride them for the first times. It is always a very exiting time to see how the young horses turn out and so far we are very satisfied with their progress.
Our puppies grow a lot. They follow us a lot to the stable and play together most of the time. The horses and sheep have no other choice then to get use to them ;-)

An informative brochure was given away from the "Icelandic Food and Veterinary Authority" last year. The brochure contains information about disinfection of riding clothes. Read the the original text here:

ATTENTION!
PROTECT THE ICELANDIC HORSE FROM INFECTIOUS DISEASES
Visitors are asked to adopt strict biosecurity measures!

Importing the following equipment is strictly prohibited:

• Used riding equipment, such as saddles, bridles, nosebands, pads, rugs, whips, etc.

• Used riding gloves

Cleaning and disinfection

• Used riding clothes and boots should be washed in a washing machine or dry cleaned prior to entering the country.

• Used riding clothes and boots that cannot be placed in a washing machine or dry cleaned should be washed and disinfected as follows:

• Rinse thoroughly with detergent. Dry. Spray with 1% VirkonS (10g per liter of water). Store for at least 5 days prior to bringing the clothes into contact with horses in Iceland

Icelandic horses are not vaccinated and are therefore susceptible to infectious agents from abroad!

Further information can be accessed at www.mast.is

Sunna, a buckskin coloured mare with a blaze, is the first offspring of our stallion Jörfi. She was "produced" when Jörfi was only a year old and we have now started to work with her. Sunna will be four years old this year. Normally we do not start to train the young horses so early but as it is very interesting and important to see how Jörfis offsprings will develope in handling and riding we decided to start with a light "break in". We did not have to break her in the common way. Sunna is a very friendly mare who is attached to people. From the first day she has been cooperative in every way. I have been sitting on her three times now and she is just fantastic. A horse to feel well on in the moment you´re mounting it. Sunna has a nice confirmation and shows good and soft gaites. We are really exited to see her progress in the coming weeks.
Beside Sunna, Jörfi and two other well trained horses we have a few more youngsters in the stable. We will get a young girl from Sweden tomorrow who is doing a practical training for her highschool with special education in riding. She will give us a helping hand with the training in the next three weeks.

Me and Júlíus have been busy in taking pictures during the weekend. You find the results in our gallery. Objects in our session were the puppies Orka and Skutla as well as Jörfi and the evening sky. Enjoy!

There are many things to write about.
Let´s start with the information that finally all detailed riding tour programs are uploaded and linked! It took some time because I had left to write all sites in html and as I´m not a professional html writer it took some weeks. BUT: it is done now and everything is up to date!
I´m planning to work on the horse sales list soon. There are so many horses for sale (foals, youngsters, trained horses) and they really need to be advertised ;-)
Further on I have opened a new gallery for the first half year 2009 and uploaded some pictures from our lovely and lively puppies. Have a look!. The puppies are growing a lot, especially the little one (Skutla). She is sometimes a bit nasty with her big sister Orka and there is a lot of playing and messing around here at the moment.
The producer of the film "Í Austurdal" is now producing a documentary about the winter riding competition KS deildin. He is reporting about the competitions and horse things in Skagafjörður. He chose us as an example for "horses and tourism" and came here yesterday to make an interview with us. We are exited to see how everything worked out....we are not on TV every week ;-).

We have a few horses in the stable to train. Among them is our stallion Jörfi and Svennis new riding horse Tinni with an incredible fast pace. As soon as I have more light to take pictures I will take and show some!

First of all we wish all our visitors a HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Like every six month we open another news site. You find older news in the archive!
There are a lot of things going on these days in our house. We got two female puppies a few days ago. The plan was to get one puppy but when we were told that the last one is going to be put down we took both ;-) We will see how things work out with the two girls. Our neighbour might take one of them but I´m sure it will be hard to let one away. Júlíus loves them both (of course, who does not love puppies), I´m eager in cleaing up after them and Svenni tries not to think about having two "moody girls" at once.
The puppies are very unlike though they are full sisters. One is tiny with very short hair, always freezing but very friendly. The other one is the more hairy type, promising to be a tough working dog, but also very attached to us.

The bookings for the next summer season go on very well. Some tours in the high season are already fully booked.
Otherwise there is not much to tell about at the moment. Live of rather quiet these days and we reload our batteries before we start training the youngsters.