Icelandic horses have been bred on the island for over a thousand years. This breed is highly recognizable due to its short stature (only up to 145 cm at the withers) and thick fur, which allows it to withstand cold weather. These horses live quite a long time – up to 40 years.
Interestingly, it was precisely these horses that the Vikings rode, and it was they who brought them to the island in the 9th-10th centuries. It is believed that Scandinavian seafarers favored these horses precisely because of their short stature, as this allowed them to save space on their longships. Unfortunately, these horses rarely appear in feature films about Vikings.
Genetic studies of mitochondrial DNA have shown that Icelandic horses are related not only to European horses but also to the Mongolian horse (Nolf, Pamela M., "Detecting Icelandic Horse Origins," Icelandic Horse Quarterly, 2012). Apparently, the Mongolian horse admixture was acquired by Northern European horses before their introduction to Iceland, as the same admixture has been detected in Fjord, Exmoor, Highland, Shetland, and Connemara pony breeds. This suggests that all these horses descend from a single ancestral population.
Subsequent attempts to introduce Eastern blood into the Icelandic breed only led to the deterioration of the breed. And in 982, the Althing, the Icelandic national assembly, passed a law prohibiting the importation of horses of other breeds to the island. Therefore, Icelandic horses have maintained a pure pedigree for over a thousand years. Iceland's current legislation not only protects its horses from the displacement of other breeds but also from the diseases foreign horses can bring. Therefore, even an Icelandic horse cannot return once it leaves the country.
In 2017, Icelanders even decided to ban giving their horses foreign names. This requirement was put forward by the International Federation of Icelandic Horse Associations (FEIF), and the responsible horse registration committee in Iceland approved it. For a horse's name to be entered into the database, it must be traditionally Icelandic, such as Björk, Dakkr, etc. These are often the names of Gods and figures from Norse mythology. For example, it is not uncommon to encounter a horse named Baldr.
This concern for the genetic purity and uniqueness of Icelandic horses, and even the linguistic purism regarding their names, is commendable.
But I also involuntarily recall the words of the genius evolutionary scientist Charles Darwin, with whose statement we will conclude our short story. In his seminal work, «The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex» (1871), Darwin wrote:
Man scans with scrupulous care the character and pedigree of his horses, cattle, and dogs before he matches them; but when he comes to his own marriage he rarely, or never, takes any such care. He is impelled by nearly the same motives as the lower animals, when they are left to their own free choice, though he is in so far superior to them that he highly values mental charms and virtues.
#Biology@thetruenorthener #History@thetruenortherner