Icelandic Horses: Breeding, Gaits and Rural Life Across the Island

Iceland has exactly one breed of horse, and by law, it will never have a second. Since the Althing outlawed the import of foreign horses in 982, the island’s herds have bred true to a stock some visitors mistake for ponies and everyone who has met one insists is anything but. Odyssey Traveller’s Iceland cultural and wilderness small group tour brings travellers face to face with them twice: once in the breeding heartland of Skagafjörður on the north coast, and again on the tour’s final full day, at the working farm of Fríðheimar. Between those two stops lies the story of an animal that shaped how Icelanders farmed, travelled and told stories about themselves.

A Breed Sealed by Law

The Icelandic horse arrived with the Norse settlers of the ninth and tenth centuries, carried in small numbers on small boats, so only the hardiest stock made the crossing. Within a couple of hundred years, Iceland’s parliament, the Althing, had seen enough attempts to bring in outside bloodlines to act. In 982 it passed a law banning the import of any horse into the country — a law that still stands today. A horse that leaves Iceland, whether for a show in Germany or a stable in Australia, may never return. The rule was framed around disease control, and it has worked: Icelandic horses are free of many of the parasites and infections that trouble other breeds, and international riders are required to arrive with disinfected gear or none at all.

The side effect of a thousand years’ isolation is a horse unlike any other alive. No crossbreeding, no outside blood, no exceptions. Icelanders once called it Þarfasti þjónninn — “the most useful servant” — a name that had nothing to do with sentiment and everything to do with the fact that, for most of the island’s history, nothing moved without one.

What Makes the Tölt So Distinctive?

The tölt is a four-beat lateral gait unique to a handful of breeds worldwide, and the Icelandic horse is the one most associated with it. At any speed, from a gentle amble to something close to a canter’s pace, the horse always has at least one foot on the ground, which removes the bounce a rider feels at a trot. Riders who have never sat comfortably on a trotting horse often find the tölt effortless — no rising, no jolting, just a smooth, gliding forward motion.

Most breeds have three or four gaits. The Icelandic horse has five. Alongside the standard walk, trot, canter and gallop, it also carries the tölt and, in some individuals, the skeið or “flying pace” — a fast, two-beat gait used historically for racing along firm, flat ground and prized today at breed shows. Not every Icelandic horse can pace; the ones that can are bred and shown specifically for it.

Small, Sturdy, and Never a Pony

Icelandic horses stand between roughly 125 and 145 centimetres at the shoulder — pony height by international measuring standards — yet every breed registry and every Icelander insists on calling them horses, and for good reason. They carry full-grown adults across lava fields, glacial rivers and volcanic ash with an ease that has nothing to do with size. A thick double coat, grown fresh each autumn and shed each spring, lets them stand outdoors through winters that would finish off a finer-boned animal. Temperament matters as much as build: the breed is known for being level-headed, rarely spooked, and generally unbothered by the coaches, cameras and curious travellers it meets along the Ring Road.

Skagafjörður: Iceland’s Horse Country

If Iceland has a spiritual home for the horse, it is Skagafjörður, the broad fjord valley on the north coast that the tour passes through on its way toward Akureyri. The region’s grassy lowlands and long summer daylight make it prime breeding ground, and it carries more stud farms per kilometre than anywhere else on the island, along with the farmhouse museum at Glaumbær, where the tour stops to see how families here lived alongside their animals. Travelling this stretch is one part of the wider 17-day Ring Road itinerary that carries the tour around the entire island, and it’s worth slowing down for: even from the coach window, Skagafjörður’s paddocks are usually dotted with grazing herds, manes blowing sideways in the wind that gives the horses their famous coats.

Do Icelandic Horses Live Outdoors All Year?

Yes, for the most part. Icelandic horses are bred to stay outside through the country’s long winters, relying on their double coat and a metabolism suited to sparse grazing. Most farms bring mares in only around foaling in late spring, and otherwise leave the herds to range across open pasture. It’s part of why the breed looks so different season to season — shaggy and thick-coated through a Ring Road tour in autumn or winter, sleek and glossy once the coat sheds in early summer.

Fríðheimar: Horses, Tomatoes and Geothermal Power

Near the end of the tour, after the glaciers and fjords of the north and east, the itinerary turns to a working farm at Fríðheimar for something entirely different: a short show by the resident Icelandic horses, followed by a walk through greenhouses growing tomatoes year-round on geothermal heat and light. It’s an odd, memorable pairing — a national animal and a national approach to agriculture, side by side on the same property — and it says something about how Icelanders have always worked with what the land gives them rather than against it. Readers curious about that broader relationship between geothermal power and the Icelandic table will find more in our piece on Icelandic food, farming and geothermal greenhouses.

Will I Get to Ride an Icelandic Horse on This Tour?

Not as part of the included itinerary. The Fríðheimar stop is a demonstration of the horses’ gaits and temperament, not a riding excursion, and the tour’s activity level is built around walking rather than time in the saddle. Travellers keen to actually ride an Icelandic horse and feel the tölt for themselves have plenty of options: dedicated riding tours are widely available across Iceland and are often arranged as an independent add-on before or after the group tour, rather than during it.

A Working Partner Through Icelandic History

For most of Iceland’s history, the horse was not a hobby animal. It carried wool to market, hauled peat and hay, forded rivers with no bridges, and got farmers between valleys that had no roads at all until well into the twentieth century. It appears throughout the medieval sagas, sometimes as a named character in its own right, and Norse settlers brought with them a reverence for horses that predates Iceland itself. Only with the arrival of trucks and tractors after the Second World War did the working role fade — and even then, breeding, showing and the tölt itself kept the horse close to the centre of rural identity rather than letting it become a museum piece.

Seeing the Herds from the Ring Road

You don’t need a scheduled stop to see Icelandic horses on this tour — they turn up everywhere. Along the black sand coastline near Vík, where the itinerary crosses some of the island’s most striking volcanic scenery, small farm herds are a common sight grazing right up against the road (our guide to Iceland’s black sand beaches covers that stretch of coast in more depth). It’s one of the quiet pleasures of a circumnavigation like this one: the horses are never really the destination, but they’re rarely far from view, wherever the road happens to be taking you that day.

When Is the Best Time to See Horses Out on the Farms?

Any time the tour runs. Icelandic horses graze outdoors from spring through autumn and are visible from the road year-round, though the experience differs by season: foals arrive in late spring and are often seen alongside their mares on an April departure, while a September tour tends to show the breed in its full winter coat, growing in ahead of the colder months. Neither is better than the other — just a different look at the same animal.

For travellers weighing up how a horse-and-farming focused route like this one compares with Odyssey’s other ways of exploring the island, our overview of Iceland small group tours for mature travellers is a useful place to start.

Few animals sum up a country as neatly as the Icelandic horse sums up Iceland: isolated, hardy, unhurried, and entirely unwilling to be anything other than exactly what it is. Travelling the Ring Road with Odyssey means meeting that animal twice — once in the breeding paddocks of Skagafjörður, and once at Fríðheimar’s farm gate — with the whole of Iceland’s volcanic, glacial, saga-soaked landscape unfolding in between.