Rettír: the sights and smells of the Icelandic horse roundup [photojournal]
This weekend Skagaströnd saw the first stages of the annual horse roundup or rettír. The hundreds of horses who spent summer living on the mountains were herded down to a paddock to be sorted and checked on.
My housemate, Outi, was right in with the action, riding a local's horse through the mountainside to help usher the other horses down off the mountain. She explained that many locals allow their horses to spend the warmer months on the mountains, where the pregnant mares give birth in the spring.
On Sunday most of the horses were off the mountain and had been taken to a paddock so that their owners could identify them. We hitched a ride with a local woman and her Icelandic sheepdog/border collie, Krafla, to see the action up close. I'm not entirely sure how it works, though. Dozens of horses, all awkwardly running around in paddocks, being sectioned off into concrete areas labelled with the owner's name. My other housemate described the whole affair as a 'total clusterfuck' which is pretty apt.
Once they're - somehow - sorted into their correct concrete cube, the horses are either taken home in a trailer or herded back by the cleverest, designated horse, where they either live for the winter, or have a little checkup and are released onto the mountain again.
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