Yes, I'm here...a couple weeks late and a dollar short. The
time-line, at least as I know it goes like this: Some horses were
shipped to Greely, Co and Ashton, MD at approximately the same time in
1960. The Greely people tried to start a registry. Several families
were involved. The Ashton MD herd is probably the first real breeding
herd in the US: one stallion, Valur fra Valadal and 12 mares. The
herd was owned by Sam Ashelman who bought them with the help of Gunnar
Bjarnnason in 1960. The two men met while Ashelman was in Iceland as a
consulting economist. Ashelman was no horseman and didn't take care of
his horses. I found out about the horses when my mother read about
them in the Washington Post the week they arrived. She nearly jumped
out of her skin because she recognized Ashelman's name as her college
friend's husband. We had to go visit them, of course. I was 15 years
old and horse-nutty and the day we visited the Icelandics my life
changed. Oh, yes, on with the time-line. In 1966, Ashelman sold all
his imported mares to a man named Vaness in Washington Island, WI. He
sold all their offspring (46) to me. Then, Peter Strong in Greenwich,
CT shipped the the next load in 1970. I spent one summer in Vermont
helping to get many of them ready for some endurance rides as Peter
had decided that the market for Icelandics lay in endurance riding.
But he became disenchanted, I think, when the horses didn't do as well
as expected. I am not exactly sure when Susan Hodgson and Robin Hood
come into the timeline,I met them in the early 70's when I sold them
some mares. The next shipment I know of was purchased by a very odd
couple on Long Island. They had heard that Icelandics made the best
therapeutic riding horses and because they had a handicapped son, they
bought a shipment of 20 horses, very few of which were suitable for
handicapped riders. Their program was called "The New Riders of the
Viking Horse", (cool name). They persuaded me to bring 4 horses up
there, which I did. While I was there, the couple broke up and the
wife managed to get all the horses plus my stallion, which I never saw
again. I am still wondering what happened. Annie Shields
