{"id":4529,"date":"2012-06-23T13:28:46","date_gmt":"2012-06-23T17:28:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=4529"},"modified":"2018-08-03T22:42:16","modified_gmt":"2018-08-04T02:42:16","slug":"saturday-june-23-2012-%e2%80%95-ponies-and-polities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/?p=4529","title":{"rendered":"Saturday, June 23, 2012 \u2015 Ponies and Polities"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I\u2019m read\u00ading a lot of Ice\u00adlandic his\u00adto\u00adry, late\u00adly, and came across this fine descrip\u00adtion of the Ice\u00adlandic horse in Mag\u00adnus Magnusson\u2019s Ice\u00adlandic Saga<\/em>. It sounds very like the stur\u00addy lit\u00adtle native ponies I saw in Wales:<\/span><\/p>\n

Phys\u00adi\u00adcal com\u00admu\u00adni\u00adca\u00adtions were daunt\u00ading. Tor\u00adren\u00adtial rivers, for\u00admi\u00adda\u00adble moun\u00adtains, impass\u00adable reach\u00ades of lava and huge dis\u00adtances were for\u00adbid\u00adding obsta\u00adcles to social inter\u00adcourse. But the set\u00adtlers from Nor\u00adway brought with them a crea\u00adture which made light of dif\u00adfi\u00adcul\u00adty and dis\u00adtance \u2015 the hardy, nim\u00adble-foot\u00aded Ice\u00adlandic horse, the pure-bred equ\u00adus scan\u00addi\u00adnav\u00adi\u00adcus<\/strong>. It was as impor\u00adtant a cat\u00ada\u00adlyst for set\u00adtle\u00adment by land as the kn\u00f6rr<\/strong> was by sea. Stur\u00addy and docile, the horse car\u00adried every\u00adone and every\u00adthing on its back \u2015 and con\u00adtin\u00adued to do so, indeed, for a 1,000 years; the first road for wheeled vehi\u00adcles was not built in Ice\u00adland until 1874. The Ice\u00adlandic horse has not changed in the slight\u00adest over the cen\u00adturies; it has nev\u00ader inter\u00adbred with for\u00adeign stock, and it is still the orig\u00adi\u00adnal Nordic horse. It has a unique range of five gaits: step (fet\u00adgan\u00adgur<\/strong>), trot (brokk<\/strong>), gal\u00adlop (st\u00f6kk<\/strong>), pace (skei\u00f0<\/strong>), and run\u00adning walk, or rack (t\u00f6lt<\/strong>); this is the dis\u00adtinc\u00adtive gait of the Ice\u00adlandic horse, set\u00adting it apart from oth\u00ader Euro\u00adpean breeds \u2015 the rid\u00ader sits per\u00adfect\u00adly still in the sad\u00addle, while the horse pos\u00adi\u00adtive\u00adly glides along. Horse-rid\u00ading in Ice\u00adland is now a plea\u00adsure and a sport rather than a neces\u00adsi\u00adty; to own a herd of free-run\u00adning hors\u00ades is some\u00adthing of a sta\u00adtus sym\u00adbol. There are some 90,000 hors\u00ades in Ice\u00adland now (one for every three of the human pop\u00adu\u00adla\u00adtion), adding romance and glam\u00adour to the land\u00adscape as they range free in the upland pas\u00adtures. In the long Ice\u00adland Saga the bond between man and horse hasw always been close and affectionate.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

It was pos\u00adsi\u00adble to cov\u00ader tremen\u00addous dis\u00adtances on the rugged Ice\u00adlandic land\u00adscape with these ani\u00admals. Con\u00adse\u00adquent\u00adly, any farmer could attend the Allth\u00ading<\/em>, the par\u00adlia\u00adment of the medieval Ice\u00adlandic repub\u00adlic. This had the pecu\u00adliar effect of turn\u00ading a com\u00adplete\u00adly non-urban soci\u00adety (there were not even vil\u00adlages or ham\u00adlets, only iso\u00adlat\u00aded farm\u00adsteads) into the equiv\u00ada\u00adlent<\/em> of a city state. For it is clear from the sagas that the per\u00adson\u00adal and polit\u00adi\u00adcal inter\u00adac\u00adtion between these far-flung set\u00adtlers was as inti\u00admate as in any Greek city. Real\u00adiz\u00ading this adds a dimen\u00adsion to our under\u00adstand\u00ading of polities.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m read\u00ading a lot of Ice\u00adlandic his\u00adto\u00adry, late\u00adly, and came across this fine descrip\u00adtion of the Ice\u00adlandic horse in Mag\u00adnus Magnusson\u2019s Ice\u00adlandic Saga. It sounds very like the stur\u00addy lit\u00adtle native ponies I saw in Wales:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,932],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-blog","category-ao-blog-2012"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4529"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4803,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4529\/revisions\/4803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.philpaine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}