We rode the Heritage Tour at Eldhestar Farm on October 11. Our friend Paula gave us the above pictures because we still didn't have a camera (but we do now and have been a bit camera-happy, so more visuals on the way). Above, Jeramy's with our friend Claire and I'm on Krueger (I'm not sure if his name is a reference to Nightmare on Elm Street, but I choose to believe it is).
My feisty black bread-lover had a mind of his own and we were promoted to the front of the line because he was too antsy to stay put. Krueger was a favourite of the tour leader, and she was quite excited that I liked his "little bit of speed." On the other hand, she yelled at our friend Elias, an inexperienced rider, who couldn't get his horse to behave. Rather than giving proper instruction, she shouted at him: "Your horse is not a machine. You have to ride him!" On the way home I asked Elias if he was upset, and he shrugged, "I'm not the one that has to live with her." But he also told me that Icelandic doesn't have a word for please or the subjunctive mood used as a polite form, so sometimes people sound more abrupt, even when they're speaking English, than they intend.
The ride unfortunately wasn't as exciting as it could have been. The mountain trail is closed for the season so we mostly toured farmland (we saw a lot of irrigation ditches). But one section of the ride, a valley along the ocean, was gorgeous and the sun came out and I was hot enough to take my arms out of the overalls they had given us. I loved looking at the geese, swans, and pastured horses along the route and Jeramy said I had my mouth open in excitement the whole ride--I'm giving you a small taste of my dorkiness in the above picture, even though it hurts my vanity.
I haven't been on a horse in over ten years, so this was a huge treat. Icelandic horses look like something out of a fairytale to me because of their forelocks and manes. They are very small and classify (height-wise) in the pony category, but Icelanders always refer to them as horses (apparently because of the breed's weight-carrying capacity, but possibly because Icelandic doesn't have a word for "pony"). Icelandic horses have a special lateral ambling gait called a tölt, and its speed approximates that of a trot, except the tölt is much smoother. Most of the horses we were riding weren't completely comfortable with the gait yet and so would switch to a trot, but the tour guide's horse was a master at tölting; consequently, her body was impressively still on the horse even when it was moving at the top of the gait's speed. The rest of us were bumping around a lot--it's difficult to post on a small horse's trot because their steps are small and quick.
This was my first taste of the Icelandic countryside and it was wonderful to get outside of Reykjavik and spend some time outdoors. I'm behind on the updates, but I have a lot more pictures and stories of the landscape. The day after our horsebackriding tour we left for a 3-day trip around the island, so more on that anon.
Great post, B. You dork you.
ReplyDeleteNorwegian, too, has no word for please. I think it really made it much harder for me to work up the nerve to try out the bits of Norwegian I know because I couldn't convince myself that I wasn't being rude by not saying "please" when I (for example) asked for a cup of coffee.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I think I probably was often rude by forgetting to say the constantly-used Norwegian phrase which means roughly "there you go". But I don't have the ingrained sense that it's rude to give someone something without saying "there you go", so it didn't bother me on a gut level.
Hugh
ooooooh, they look like Connemara ponies!! I am terribly envious right now!!
ReplyDelete