Around Langjökull in Nine Days, Chapter 1

 
 

Around Langjökull in Nine Days
An illustrated report in six short chapters
© Risto Jalava 1996

No hoofbeats from behind. I glance back and turn my horse. I return to find out. Örn walks leading his horse and scans the stony ground as if trying to find something. Four other riders do the same from the saddle. Örn’s horse has lost a shoe and the shoe stays lost. Óli removes a leather bag from behind his saddle. There are a few horseshoes in the bag, as well as a pack of shoeing nails and, wrapped in a dirty T-shirt, a hammer, a pair of large pincers, a pair of tongs. And a pack of playing cards.
 
ÖRN'S HORSE GETS SHOED [94 KB VERSION]

     “Well, how is it?” I ask Lena and point to the horse Lena has received with foreboding from broadly grinning Gunnar. Lena says the horse does not know how to tölt at all, it is actually our only packhorse. Lena’s rear has taken a beating, but the nursing industry has offered her some relief. Lena has taken precautions and has strengthened her contact surfaces with patches made for prevention and healing of bedsores. They stick to the skin like bicycle inner tube patches and look the same, only white.
     The shoe is fixed in no time and Óli jumps to the saddle. The horse jumps too, it throws fore and hind hooves in the air as in a small-time rodeo. The stirrups dangle loose but Óli is not easy to shake off. The horse finds it out soon. We gallop after the others. Gently rolling highlands spread around us in every direction, stony and grey. Eiríksjökull, 1675 meters, is behind our back. On the right the landscape is fenced by 60 kilometres long glacier Langjökull. It looks like an overturned canoe with a white bottom. Six ravens fly on our side, croaking.
     The others wait for us in a green hollow. We, 15 riders and 53 horses, are on our third day around Langjökull, the second largest glacier in Iceland. The ten Icelanders are men, all but one, and the five foreign tourists are all women, one excepted. We are not exactly young. Fiffi is the youngest, 27, and looks slightly wild: piercings, tattoos, painted eyebrows and shaven head. Flosi, Bessi and Gísli are well over sixty. The rest are evenly between. The natives have been on horseback all their lives and the tourists have also done some riding before, even in Iceland. Lena has done all her riding in Sweden, though.
 
EVENING IN ARNARVATNSHEIDI [64 KB VERSION]

[Next Chapter: Black Mountains]
[Beginner's Guide to Riding in Iceland]