> BTW, one of the most impressive Icelandics I've ever met was one of the very > first I met - Anneliese's Valur. She bought him from Gudmar's family. I > have no idea if this is typical of the horses Gudmar sells, but I know > firsthand of one excellent horse his family trained and sold.
Allright, time for me to pipe in here. I am probably the first one to buy horses from or with the help of Gudmar and his family. They don't breed horses themselves but they go all over Iceland and buy the best horses they can find. They buy horses from Midsitja (trained by Solveig Stefansdottir and her husband Johann Thorsteinson) excellent horses in every way. Valur (from Midsitaja) was going to be Gudmar's next competition horse after he had competed on Spuni and sold him. I rode Valur in Iceland and Spuni too, by the way, and just had to have Valur. Gudmar, Petur (his father), Hakon (his brother) Kolla (his mother) have always tried to bring they best horses to the US they could find. Initially they brought in some very good but ugly horses. In Iceland it does not seem to matter if a horse is ugly or has ears that have been notched (for identification) and look truly horible, as long as it is a good (not pacey, not trotty) riding horse. After a little while, they came to understand that the American market won't readily accept ugly horses and adapted. They also understood early on that here in the US, horses need brakes. The first horses I bought from them or through them did not know how to back up or sidestep; but at our place, they had to soon learn to do so because we need to open gates and I be @#$%^ to get off to do so. And from all I have seen, and I have known Gudmar since he was 16, I have to say that he is a good horseman who understands horses and tries to do the right thing by them. I can tell that by the way horses react to him. They trust him. Now, you cannot expect people from Iceland to forget completely the culture they grew up with but I think that Gudmar for one has adapted to our ways more than many others. Anneliese
