Drive almost anywhere outside Reykjavík and you'll pass fields of them: short, thick-maned, unbothered by weather that would send most horses looking for shelter. Icelandic horses are one of the purest breeds on Earth, descended from stock that arrived with Norse settlers over a thousand years ago and hasn't been cross-bred since. They also do something almost no other horse breed does as a matter of course, and if one ever leaves Iceland, it can never legally come back.
Arriving with the Vikings
The horses came over with the settlers themselves, during Iceland's Age of Settlement in the late 9th and early 10th centuries — brought by longship from Norway and the British Isles as working animals essential to farming, transport, and travel across a roadless island. They show up constantly in the Icelandic sagas, not as background detail but as named characters in their own right, prized enough to fight duels over.
The law that made them what they are
What makes the breed genuinely unusual isn't its origin — plenty of horse breeds trace back to Viking-era stock — it's what happened next: nothing. In 982 AD, Iceland's parliament, the Alþingi, banned the importation of any other horses into the country, after early attempts to bring in and cross-breed Oriental horses were judged to have weakened the local stock. That ban, as Guide to Iceland's history of the breed lays out has never been lifted. Over a thousand years later, it still hasn't — every Icelandic horse alive today descends from that original, closed gene pool.
The modern version of that same instinct is a biosecurity law that surprises most visitors: a horse can be exported out of Iceland without much difficulty, but once it leaves, it can never legally return, even for a visit. The rule exists to keep foreign diseases and parasites — which the isolated Icelandic herd has never been exposed to and has no natural resistance against — from ever entering the country through returning animals. It's an extraordinary thing to build national policy around, and it's a large part of why the breed still looks and moves the way it did a thousand years ago.
Five gaits, not the usual three
Most horses walk, trot, and canter or gallop — three natural gaits. Icelandic horses do all of that plus two more, and it's the reason serious riders travel specifically to ride them. The tölt is a four-beat lateral gait, smooth enough that riders often demonstrate it holding a full drink without spilling it — fast, comfortable, and almost gallop-quick with none of the trot's characteristic bounce. Some Icelandic horses can also perform the flying pace, or skeið, a high-speed gait used in short sprint races that's less about comfort and more about raw speed over a straight, flat course. Not every horse does both extra gaits equally well, and breeding programs in Iceland still select specifically for gait quality, generation after generation.
Small, tough, and endlessly colorful
By international sizing standards, an Icelandic horse is technically pony height — usually around 13 to 14 hands — but calling one a pony in Iceland will get you politely corrected. They're bred and built for strength and endurance rather than height: thick-coated, sturdy-legged, and capable of living outdoors through Icelandic winters that regularly involve horizontal sleet and sustained gale-force wind. They're also unusually long-lived and slow to mature, often still being trained into their gaits at four or five years old and staying in work well into their twenties. One trait that consistently surprises first-time visitors: the breed carries an exceptionally wide range of coat colors and patterns, well over 100 recognized combinations, more variety than almost any other horse breed on Earth.
Meeting them today
You don't need any riding experience to try one. Riding centers across the country — clustered especially around Reykjavík, Hafnarfjörður, and Mosfellsbær, with more scattered along the Ring Road — run beginner-friendly tours ranging from a one-hour taste of the tölt to full-day rides across lava fields and black sand beaches, multi-day trips into the Highlands for more experienced riders. Because the horses are so even-tempered and the tölt so naturally smooth, it's a genuinely approachable activity for someone who has never been on a horse, not just a photo opportunity dressed up as one. Spring, particularly May, is foaling season, and many farms welcome visitors to see that year's new arrivals on wobbly legs in the home pasture.
More than a tourist attraction
The breed has a genuine international following well beyond Iceland: exported Icelandic horses and their competitions are organized worldwide under FEIF, the International Federation of Icelandic Horse Associations, which coordinates breeding standards, gait competitions, and youth programs across more than 20 member countries. Inside Iceland, they're still working animals as much as sporting or tourist ones — used every autumn in the réttir, the traditional communal round-up when sheep that have grazed free in the highlands all summer are gathered back down, on horseback, across open country no vehicle could easily cover.
It's a rare thing for a single decision — one law, made by a handful of men over a thousand years ago for reasons that had nothing to do with tourism — to still be visibly shaping a country's landscape and its visitors' experience of it. The horses in the roadside fields on the way to the airport are that decision, still standing.
Written by
Erika Sand
Erika has spent the last decade driving, hiking, and hot-spring-hopping across Iceland in every season. She writes NRF.is’s itineraries, guides, and trip reports to help travelers see the country safely, affordably, and without the tourist-trap detours.