Icelandic horse

The Icelandic horse is both essential transport and an independent presence in the expedition’s overland journey: sturdy enough to carry the party across rough country, yet not a creature that can simply be made to follow a human command. Its sure footing sustains the travelers’ progress, while its refusal at a dangerous fjord exposes the limits of Professor Hardwigg’s faith in his mount—and in his own authority over it.

Transport for the Expedition

Four horses are prepared for the journey from Reykjavik toward Stapi, two to carry baggage and two to bear Professor Hardwigg and Henry. Hans Bjelke, the guide, declines to ride and promises instead to lead the shortest route, knowing the coast intimately. The horses are therefore not incidental equipment: they are the expedition’s means of moving its people and supplies through a country where the roads make even a journey of about twenty-two Danish miles an undertaking expected to last eight or ten days.

The landscape tests them continuously. Rocky spurs descend across arid ground and leave barely enough room to pass, but the horses seem familiar with the country and select the best route by instinct. Their movement is not directed by the usual human signals: Hardwigg cannot hurry his mount with whip, spur, or voice, and the narrator watches the Professor’s long legs sometimes touch the ground as he rides his small horse. The comic image also records a practical truth: the animals set the pace.

Hardwigg’s Confidence and the Horse’s Refusal

Hardwigg praises the Icelandic horse as brave, sober, and safe, claiming that snow, storms, rocks, and icebergs do not stop it and that it never slips or takes a false step. He expects the horses to cross rivers and fjords without hesitation, but adds that they must be allowed to have their own way. His confidence rests, paradoxically, on recognizing that the animal’s sound judgment cannot be replaced by impatience.

At a fjord about half a mile wide, beneath rocky walls rising three thousand feet, that confidence meets a direct test. The waves break against pointed rocks, and Henry doubts that a small horse can safely cross salt water. Hardwigg nevertheless urges his mount toward the shore. The horse approaches the water, smells the incoming wave, and retreats; when pressed again, it calmly shakes its head and refuses. Hardwigg answers with words and whipcord, and the horse kicks and throws its head and heels, nearly unseating him before slipping out from under his legs. The Professor is left standing with each foot on a separate stone, forced to continue on foot and angry at the animal he had just extolled.

Icelandic Life and Animal Agency

The horses belong to a wider account of Icelandic life in which animals and natural resources sustain human livelihoods. The narrator describes the Icelanders’ principal export as codfish and explains how hunters collect eider down from nests along low coastal cliffs. Against this background, the horse’s role is not merely picturesque: it makes travel across a stark, sparsely vegetated island possible, while its ability to choose a path—and to refuse an unsafe crossing—gives the animal an effective part in determining what the travelers can do.

The fjord episode turns Hardwigg’s earlier praise into a quiet reversal. He has described the horse as dependable precisely because it is sure-footed and unhurried; when the danger becomes immediate, the animal’s retreat proves more reliable than his insistence. Its resistance is not a failure of service but a limit on human control, and the travelers proceed only after the horse has made that limit unmistakable.