Reading to your horse

Bradley reads Someone to Watch Over Me by the Icelandic author Yrsa Sigurdardottir to his Icelandic horse Gus. I definitely recommend the author and the practice of reading to your Icelandic horse.

"The Queen of the Night" by Alexander Chee,

My current read is "The Queen of the Night" by Alexander Chee, a novel about Lilliet Berne, an American orphan, who works in the circus to escape America, become a streetwalker then maid for Empress Eugenie, transforms into a courtesan and eventual star of the Paris opera world as a falcon soprano--yes, I know a plot as fantastical and convoluted as the operas of the mid 1800s.

Here is a link explaining what is a falcon soprano.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Db5hPzxVTOU

And here is the rarest of females hybrid voices--

absoluta soprana. If you can only listen to part of this, I suggest minutes 2:20 to 3:50 using Maria Callas to illustrate witchy contralto to coloratura soprano.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WstkPL61mME

I am fascinated by the cover of this book, which is a photo of the real life Virginia Oldoini (1837–1899). The beautiful Countess da Castiglione was supposedly sent to Paris to seduce Emperor Napoleon III to support Italian unification. The Countess da Castiglione was fascinated with photography. She worked with the studio of Mayer & Pierson and other photographers in the mid 1800s to produce 700 photographs of her life and visions of herself. 

"While many of the portraits record the countess’ triumphant moments in Parisian society, wearing the extravagant gowns and costumes in which she appeared at soirées and masked balls, in others she assumes roles drawn from the theater,

opera, literature, and her own imagination. Functioning as a means of self-advertisement as well as self-expression, they show the countess, by turns, as a mysterious seductress, a virginal innocent, and a charming coquette. Provided with titles of her own choosing, and often elaborately painted under her direction, these images were frequently sent to lovers and admirers as tokens of her favor. Unique in the annals of nineteenth-century photography, these works have been seen as

forerunners to the self-portrait photography of later artists such as Claude Cahun, Pierre Molinier, and Cindy Sherman. 

Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photos are from Met or Wikipedia.

Behind the Scenes of Printing Hestur Book

Samy Berkani is publishing a new book, Hestur, about the Icelandic horses.  Here is a fascinating look at the printing process for publishing a book with amazing photos of this breed.

Yrsa Sigurðardóttir --Icelandic Mystery Writer

The murder rate in Iceland is 20 times lower than the world average, which works out to be .3 murders per 100,000 people.  To put it another way, there were 25 murders in Iceland between 2000 and 2012. 

This has not stopped Iceland from producing some excellent mystery writers.  Recently, I read two books by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir.  Someone to Watch Over Me and Day is Dark  feature her leading character Thora Gudmundsdottir, a lawyer.    Her books feature suspense, twisty plots, interesting characters, sly humor, and a touch of the supernatural, as one would expect in the land of trolls and ice.

The reader also gains insight into daily Icelandic life such as the devastation of personal finances caused by the failure of Icelandic banks resulting in Thora's parents having to move in with her, her children, and boyfriend Matthew from Germany. The constant fight to maintain dry, warm feet when dealing with the winter snows.  Or Iceland's unique cuisine as indicated by this passage:

"Mathew had managed to adapt to many aspects of Icelandic society, but taking cod liver oil was the exception.  Thora allowed him to skip it--he had enough to put with from her friends, who had all come up with the same idea when Matthey and Thora were invited to dinner or a party: to ply him with cured shark and brennivin."

My view of Iceland is so influenced by owning an Icelandic horse.  I assumed all Icelanders were avid riders and most owned horses.  I have read two books by Sigurðardóttir and no horses have turned up--cats, dogs, but no horses.

Wendy Williams' The Horse: Review Part II

I finally finished Wendy William's The Horse: The Epic History of Our Noble Companion. Her master work includes interviews with researchers studying wild horse behavior, organizers who successfully reintroduced the Przewalsksi or Takhi wild horse to Mongolia, scientists studying equine social behavior, and much more.

Williams writes so vividly that for the first time I read about the evolution of the horse from start to finish--a process involving continental drift, triumph of grass, climate change, plant wax at the bottom of the ocean, and much more. 

Above is a photo from the 1905 Scientific American article on the evolution of the horse. It contrasts the phases of a modern horse canter (based on photographs) with how scientists of the time thought the Hyracotheium, a 4-toed horse dating from 56 million years ago in the Eocene period moved. Hyracothenium was assumed to canter like modern horses.

As Williams explains these very early horses lived in a warm, jungle- like environment in which they mushed grapes, browsed on other fodder, and scampered like rabbits. The modern horse canter was millions of years in the future. Plains covered in grass appeared and the horse grew taller, four toes became one toe, evolved to run, and developed the tough teeth needed to graze on silica-based grasses. Brains grew bigger to track and find more dispersed resources.

The evolution of the horse had one benefit important to mankind. As Dr. Martin Fischer, German evolutionary biologist explains, "Horses are actually the only dorsal-stable animal we have. That's why we can ride them." p. 83

Wendy Williams' The Horse: Review Part I

Above is a photo of the Vogelherd horse, the first known sculpture of a horse carved 35,000 years ago. This 2-inch long horse carved from Mammoth ivory was found in a cave in Germany. As Wendy Williams in her recently published book The Horse: The Epic History of our Noble Companion, describes it: "Across thirty five millennia, you can almost hear him snort and see him toss his head, warning encroaching stallions to take care." p. 12 Williams asks about horses "What are their special powers?" Perhaps our "fascination with horses is somehow encoded in our genes."

She examines the natural history of the horse and the horse-human bond especially emphasizing recent equine research, which definely disproves a lot of the claims of certain horse training approaches. Some points I have discovered in the first chapter:

- The male-centric view of wild horses is false--very often the mares initiate herd behavior.

- A pair of bonded mares in a wild horse herd in Spain remained in a territory with its head stallion but when they came into season, they accompanied each other to go mate with a neighboring stallion--year after year

- British researcher Deborah Goodwin is summarized by Williams as saying "our belief that stallions dominate a band may be due to the hierarchical structure of our own culture..." which has caused us to "view relationships among horses with blinders on." p. 28

- One wild mare High Tail bonded so strongly with her first stallion that even after he lost his harem, she snuck away from each new stallion to be with him until he died of old age. As she did with other stallions she bonded with.

- Horse hierarchies are not fixed but are fluid and flexible. Horse A may rank higher than b, but c may rank higher than a. 

"Traditionally, we've thought that horses only function via a kind of computerlike binary code of positive and negative reinforcement--the carrot or the stick. Now that science is showing us the subtleties of how horses naturally interact with each other, we can expand our own interactions with them, improve our ability to communicate with them, and enrich our partnership....A relationship that has been traditionally seen as unidirectional--we command and they obey--can now become much more nuanced and sensitive." p 32

Can't wait to read more. I am only on page 32.  Hint:  This book would make a fantastic Christmas present for any of your equine oriented friends or family.

Making a Maze to Show How a Creature Thinks

"We don't understand them," [Wendy Alexa] continued. "Try to make a maze that will show how this creature thinks. We don't even understand them enough to test them. Maybe mazes aren't the way to study them. Science can only say so much. I know they watched me. They followed me. But proving that intelligence is so difficult. There's nothing so peculiar as an octopus." 
Quoted by Sy Montgomery in The Soul of an Octopus.

Ha, I bet you thought I was talking about horses. And in a way, I was. Some of the surprising recent research that has recently come out about equine cognitive processing (using symbols to indicate choices on blanketing, using glances to try to get people to put treat bucket in paddock with horse, figuring out how to open a box with hay by observing another horse) is the result of scientists building tests based on better understanding of how a horse thinks and communicates.

Birkebeinerne --Norweigian Film

In 2016, the film Birkebeinerne, or The Last King, was released in Norway.  It is based on historical events in 1206 AD about the civil war in Norway in which the poor rebels, known as birchlegs due to the poorness of their leg coverings, spirited two-year-old Haakon Haakonsson, heir to the Norwegian throne, to safety on skiis.   The producers were going after historical accuracy--one aspect of which is that the Norse are riding Icelandic, Nortlund, and Fjord horses.

Woman and Horse Introduce Icelandic Sagas

This rider and her lovely Icelandic horse provide a brief intro to the Icelandic sagas--who doesn't love a great story about family feuds, revenge, love, fantastic adventures.

The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination

"Be afraid, be very afraid." Who can forget that moment in the movie The Fly when we see the ear fall off Dr. Seth Brundle, played by Jeff Goldblum, as part of his transformation into a fly? Science fiction abounds in tales of mad scientists--Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Moreau, Dr. Jekyll. But who has ever heard of a mad political scientist?

In his short story "A More Perfect Union," L.E. Modesitt, Jr., who has worked for 20 years in politics among his other occupations, describes tongue-in-cheek how a political scientist/campaign manager in 2067 plots the rise of politician William Lester, not to the US Presidency, but to the head of the North American Union, which is gaining in importance since rising sea level has driven much of the US population to Canada. 

Asked what services a mad political scientist can provide, the narrator explains, "I use academic and other research methods to gain the maximum positive emphasis for whomever I work for, and the maximum negative exposure for his opponent. That's the polite way of putting it. Everything is aboveboard and clean in the dirtiest way possible with no fingerprints." Or to be succinct, "Old fashioned results with no legal fuss."

Modesitt probably wrote this story in 2011 or 2012 since it was published in the 2013 anthology "The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination.". What is scary is how prescient Modesitt is about how social media and the web can be used to manipulate elections. Webchures target various voter niches such as voter group 1-A Beta "undecided, highly educated, religiously affiliated, self-identified, self-made professionals." Photos in Webchures are very subtly enhanced to make a happily married political opponent and his male staff seem suggestively closer and more interested in each other than the paperwork they are examining. Speeches are tailored to the specific audience being addressed.
"Now, an old-line news analyst of the past century might have caught a certain lack of philosophical consistency, but after the passage of the revised Freedom of Information Act of 2040 by the U.S. Congress, which affirmed the right of every citizen to the news of his or her choice, unhampered by contradictory facts, none of the 207 different news channels had a news analyst interested in such, since hiring anybody for such a position might have subjected them to civil action under the FOIA [revised]."

The editor categorized this mad scientist tale under Rule 1776: "A real genius can fool all the people all the time." Is this where we are heading?

Tracy Chevalier's Remarkable Creatures

Who remembers as a child chanting the tongue twister "She sells seashells on the seashore" until you
and your friends collapsed into giggling nonsense? The phrase was part of a children's poem written about Mary Anning (1799 -1847). Currently I am reading Tracy Chevalier's "Remarkable Creatures," a novel based on the lives of Anning and her friend Elizabeth Philpott and their passion for fossil collecting along the beaches of Dorsett, England.

Mary Anning was the daughter of a carpenter in Lyme Regis, a seaside town in southwest England. Mary and other family members gained additional income by gathering recently exposed fossils on the beach and selling them to visitors at the popular seaside resort. Mary herself was the first to find and reassemble an entire skeleton of--what was later to be called--an ichthyosaur. (Her first ichthyosaur skeleton ended up in a curiosities exhibition dressed in monocle and waistcoat.) People of the time usually called these types of odd fossils "crocodiles" of which no living examples had yet been observed in the wild. The theory of extinction of species had not been formulated, let alone accepted. In the popular belief of the time to claim that a species went extinct was to claim that God did not create perfect animals. She also discovered that the strange, conical shaped "bezoar stones" commonly found on the beach were fossilized ichthyosaur and plesiosaur feces.

Mary went on to make a number of findings and observations to the burgeoning science of paleontology. Because of her class and sex, she was shut out of any scientific discussion of her finds so she did not often receive credit. However the British Society for the Advancement of Science did award her a civil list pension of 25 pounds per year for her contributions to geology. In 2010, the Royal Society named her as one of the top ten most influential women in the history of British science. Her friend Miss Philpott also made more minor, but important, discoveries.

And this is why I love reading novels like "Remarkable Creatures" that exhume from the buried facts of history little known women who made major contributions to the arts and sciences. The painting, by an unspecified artist, depicts Mary Anning and her dog Tray before the Golden Cap in Dorset, which exposes a 185 million year continual stratum of Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous rock. Her dog Tray was killed by a landslide when the two were collecting fossils in this area. Mary herself was buried in another slide but survived. She also survived being hit by lightning as a child.

As Tracy Chevalier starts her novel, "I feel an echo of the lightning each time I find a fossil, a little jolt that says, 'Yes, Mary Anning, you are different from all the rocks on the beach.' That is why I am a hunter: to feel that bolt of lightning, and that difference, every day."

Citations: Remarkable Creatures and Wikipedia
Painting: Wikipedia

CIA, encryption, and sculpture

The CIA, encryption, and sculpture. Which one of these three words does not belong? If you guessed sculpture, you would be incorrect since this is a trick question. David Hagburg's spy thriller End Game involves betrayal, rogue agents, WMDs in Iran, grotesque murders, and the the decryption of the Kryptos sculpture at CIA headquarters to solve a national crisis.

Jim Sanborn, the artist, called the assembly "Kryptos" which is Greek for "hidden." In a feature with flowing water, petrified wood, quartz, and granite sits a S-shaped copper scroll with excised letters. The theme is Intelligence Gathering. The sculpture contains four panels of text--each of which is encrypted using a different method--and was designed with the help of retired CIA cryptographer Edward M. Scheidt. All four codes need to be broken before the ultimate riddle can be solved. After its dedication in 1990, the CIA challenged the public to solve the codes. Jim Sanborn provided a few clues and, perhaps, has left the ultimate solution with a CIA representative. Some misspellings were included deliberately, and some unintentionally, which added to the complexity of the challenge.

In 1999, Jim Gillogly, a computer scientist, used a computer to break the first three codes. A year earlier, a CIA agent David Stein used pencil and paper to solve the same three panels but the information was kept within the intelligence community to not discourage the public.
Passage 1:
BETWEEN SUBTLE SHADING AND THE ABSENCE OF LIGHT LIES THE NUANCE OF IQLUSION
Passage 2:
IT WAS TOTALLY INVISIBLE HOWS THAT POSSIBLE ? THEY USED THE EARTHS MAGNETIC FIELD X THE INFORMATION WAS GATHERED AND TRANSMITTED UNDERGRUUND TO AN UNKNOWN LOCATION X DOES LANGLEY KNOW ABOUT THIS ? THEY SHOULD ITS BURIED OUT THERE SOMEWHERE X WHO KNOWS THE EXACT LOCATION ? ONLY WW THIS WAS HIS LAST MESSAGE X THIRTY EIGHT DEGREES FIFTY SEVEN MINUTES SIX POINT FIVE SECONDS NORTH SEVENTY SEVEN DEGREES EIGHT MINUTES FORTY FOUR SECONDS WEST X LAYER TWO
Passage 3:
SLOWLY DESPARATLY SLOWLY THE REMAINS OF PASSAGE DEBRIS THAT ENCUMBERED THE LOWER PART OF THE DOORWAY WAS REMOVED WITH TREMBLING HANDS I MADE A TINY BREACH IN THE UPPER LEFT HAND CORNER AND THEN WIDENING THE HOLE A LITTLE I INSERTED THE CANDLE AND PEERED IN THE HOT AIR ESCAPING FROM THE CHAMBER CAUSED THE FLAME TO FLICKER BUT PRESENTLY DETAILS OF THE ROOM WITHIN EMERGED FROM THE MIST X CAN YOU SEE ANYTHING Q ?
This is a paraphrased version of Howard Carter's observations during the opening of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922
Passage 4:
Has yet to be solved by the public. The artist has provided the clue that letters 64 to 74 are BERLIN CLOCK. There is a piece of art in Berlin called Mengenlehreuhr or "Set Theory Clock" which uses rows of panels that light up to tell the time.
"They will be able to read what I wrote, but what I wrote is a mystery itself." James Sanborn

Here's a link to the Web site if you want to attempt to solve the final panel.
Source: Wikipedia, CIA Web site
https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/headquarters-tour/kryptos/

The Horse by Wendy Williams a book review

Below is a photo of the Vogelherd horse, the first known sculpture of a horse carved 35,000 years ago. This 2-inch long horse carved from Mammoth ivory was found in a cave in Germany. As Wendy Williams in her recently published book The Horse: The Epic History of our Noble Companion, describes it: "Across thirty five millennia, you can almost hear him snort and see him toss his head, warning encroaching stallions to take care." p. 12 Williams asks the question about horses... "What are their special powers?" Perhaps our "fascination with horses is somehow encoded in our genes."

She examines the natural history of the horse and the horse-human bond especially emphasizing recent equine research, which definitely disproves a lot of the claims of certain horse training approaches. Some points I have discovered in the first chapter:

- The male-centric view of wild horses is false--very often the mares initiate herd behavior.

- A pair of bonded mares in a wild horse herd in Spain remained in a territory with the head stallion but when they came into season, they accompanied each other to go mate with a neighboring stallion--year after year

- British researcher Deborah Goodwin is summarized by Williams as saying "our belief that stallions dominate a band may be due to the hierarchical structure of our own culture..." which has caused us to "view relationships among horses with blinders on." p. 28

- One wild mare High Tail bonded so strongly with her first stallion that even after he lost his harem, she snuck away from each new stallion to be with him until he died of old age. As she did with other stallions she bonded with.

- Horse hierarchies are not fixed but are fluid and flexible. Horse A may rank higher than b, but c may rank higher than a.

"Now that science is showing us the subtleties of how horses naturally interact with each other, we can expand our own interactions with them, improve our ability to communicate with them, and enrich our partnership....A relationship that has been traditionally seen as unidirectional--we command and they obey--can now become much more nuanced and sensitive." p 32

Can't wait to read more. I am only on page 32.

Gertrude Bell--Queen of the Desert

"The finest place in the world is the back of a swift horse,

Bell quickly learned to ride astride
rather than sidesaddle on her
dessert explorations.

And the best of good companions is a book."  Al-mutanabbi, Arab poet, 915 AD - 965 AD



The fragment of verse above could have easily been written by Gertrude Bell (1868 to 1926).  During her time, Gertrude Bell was as famous as T.E. Lawrence, otherwise known as Lawrence of Arabia.  The daughter of a wealthy British baronet, she was the first woman to take first class history honors in Oxford.  She and her two alpine guides blazed ten new paths to the summits of Alp peaks.  Bell spoke Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Italian, and German.

The cover above is based on a photo
of Gertrude Bell, Winston Churchill,
T.E. Lawrence, and other British notables
riding camels in the Mideast.

Gertrude Bell spent years organizing and leading archaeological and exploratory expeditions  in the desserts of Syria, Arabia, Mesopotamia and Asia Minor.  The contacts she made with the dessert tribes gave her a unique knowledge of tribal alliances during her work as a British political officer during WW I and her post war work as Oriental Secretary.  She was instrumental in helping to establish the political administration of Iran after the war.  During her lifetime, Gertrude Bell was known as "Queen of the Dessert." Unfortunately, Bell never had a producer like David McLean make a blockbuster movie about her so she is unknown to most Americans.




I recently finished reading Gertrude Bell  A Woman in Arabia: The Writings of the Queen of the Desert edited by Georgina Howell.  I want to read Howell's biography Gertrude Bell Queen of the Desert next.  You can also access on-line versions of Bell's own works such as Amurath to Amurath on-line using links such as http://www.presscom.co.uk/amrath/amurath.html



Werner Herzog wrote and directed a 2015 film "Queen of the Dessert" about Gertrude Bell's life staring Nicole Kidman, Robert Pattinson, James Franco, and Damien Lewis.   The reviews have been mostly bad but I want to see the movie anyway.

 

Above is a photo Bell took during her excavations at Babylonia.  As she described the great lion statue above, "It is as though the workmen of the Great King had fashioned an image of Destiny, treading relentlessly over the generations." 

2015 Equus Film Festival --Part 2

In November, Equus Magazine and other sponsors held a film festival all about horses--from professionally produced features to amateur productions.  Here is a link to the site where you can view many of these films.  Beware you can spend a lot of time viewing these entries.

Here is the preview to Of Gods and Kings: The Skyros Horse about the conservation effort for an ancient horse breed in Greece that is only found on the Skyros Island.  You can see some similarities with the background of the Icelandic horse (but not genetically).

2015 Equus Film Festival Films--Part 1

In November, Equus Magazine and other sponsors held a film festival all about horses--from professionally produced features to amateur productions.  Here is a link to the site where you can view many of these films.  Beware you can spend a lot of time viewing these entries.

http://www.equusfilmfestival.net/films.html

Here is one of my favorite in the student production category  "Whip my mane."

HÖRDUR German film about Icelandic horse

HÖRDUR is a recently released film in Germany.  As far as I can tell, the plot involves a misunderstood girl meeting a misunderstood horse who find redemption through their partnership.  It looks like a great film.  I hope it gets released in the US with English subtitles. 

Review of Runaway Pony by Krista Ruepp

Runaway Pony by Krista Ruepp is a charming story about a young girl named Anna who lives with her parents and grandparents on a farm on an island off the coast of Iceland.   Anna is teaching her special friend, a young Icelandic colt named Prince, to lead.  Scared by tractor pulling a load of empty milk cans, Prince takes off and refuses to let Anna catch him.  Anna's grandmother teaches Anna a lesson on how to work with horses and gain their trust.  Those of us familiar with Icelandic horses can all guess that the lesson involves apples.    The water colors of the Icelandic landscapes and horses by Ulrike Heyne are wonderfully executed.

Sigh!  I am really going to have to go on Amazon and purchase a bunch of these books for my niece MacKenzie.

Elska--Horse Diaries Book Review

My niece MacKenzie can read simple books on her own so I am looking for  books about Icelandic horses that she might enjoy.  Of course I want to inoculate her with the Icelandic horse bug as soon as possible.




Amma is a girl who lives in Iceland around 1000 AD.  She has a special relationship with Elska, a silver dapple filly born on her family's farm.  As Elska develops into quite a fast pace racer, the story revolves around if Amma how can keep this talented horse when racers are valued gifts to local powerful men.








This is a cute story.  I loved the illustrations of Icelandics and people attired in historic Norse garb.  I was amused that the riders were depicted in s-shaped safety stirrups--pretty sure that this is not period.

Horses in The Hobbit and HBO Game of Thrones--Update 1-19-15

1-19-15

The black and white horses that appear in The Hobbit--The Desolation of Smaug are Gypsy Vanners

Gypsy Vanner Mare---from Wikipedia

provided by Gypsy Royal Stud. When the owner was first contacted, she thought the message on her answer machine was a joke.

“I thought it was a joke so I did nothing about it,” Lynda says. “The next day they rang again and it was for real.  They said they had been searching for a particular looking horse and found [the Gypsy breed] on the internet.  They apparently thought they would be perfect for what they wanted and googled gypsy horses in NZ which brought up my stud.” Here is a link to the breeding farm site that explains about why this type of horse was selected for the movie.  http://www.theonering.net/torwp/2013/08/14/77087-discover-the-horses-of-the-hobbit/

Like Icelandic horses, Gypsy Vanners tend to be round and low withered.  Jed Brophy who plays Nori the Dwarf makes the following observation about riding Gypsy Vanners in the movie:

"Getting on the pregnant horses was interesting. We had these black and white horses and we couldn't do the girths up properly, so that was getting on … and falling off. There was quite a bit of that in the day which was quite a lot of fun, working out how to get on a horse when the saddle was slipping."

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/blogs/get-flickd/the-hobbit-the-desolation-of-smaug-lesson-one-never-interview-dwarves-20131104-2wxlw.html#ixzz3PJKvY6XU

"

12-23-14

To the best of my knowledge, Icelandic horses do not make an appearance in The Hobbit: Battle of Five Armies.  However, here is a video about the horse Draysill that Beorn gave to Gandalf (appears in Parts 2 and 3).  Draysill is an 18-hand Clydesdale whose real name is Big Nick.  Oh, the elk that Thranduil rides is a digitally enhanced horse by the name of Moose (breed unknown).

Here is a report about how animals were handled during the filming of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Firve Armies.  Interestingly even though there was quite a scandal during the treatment of livestock during the first movie, "Due to limited resources and scheduling conflicts, The American Humane Association did not monitor any of the dog, goat, pig and some of the horse action."

Source:  

http://www.humanehollywood.org/index.php/movie-archive/item/the-hobbit-the-battle-of-the-five-armies

7-15-14

Game of Thrones filmed much of the Arya and Hound arc in Iceland in summer.  The producers certainly show off Iceland in all of its summer glory.  In the finale of Season 4, Arya rides away from the dying Hound.  In these scenes, the actress Maise Williams who plays Arya is riding a beautiful Icelandic horse.  Hopefully her riding in Iceland in Season 4 went a bit better than her riding experiences in Season 3:

" I was riding on the horse for a bit that day, and it was lovely weather, and I just remember having such a relaxing day. I met Rory in the pilot episode, and he's just a really, really nice guy. In that scene, we'd done a few rehearsals before with [director] David Nutter, just to see how everything was gonna go. So by the time we started shooting, we were quite confident. There weren't many hiccups, apart from I kind of fell off the horse and my foot got caught in the reins.

Oh, really?
Yeah, it was really funny, actually. My leg was, like, caught up by my ear, and I was like, "Oh, brilliant." [Laughs.] "
Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/09/game-of-thrones-arya-stark_n_3412550.html

Since the only horses in Iceland are the pony-sized Icelandic horse breed (no horses can be imported into Iceland because of concerns of spreading disease to the native horses), one can understand the scene in Season 4, Episode 10 in which Brienne of Tarth wakes up, finds the horses missing,  and accuses Pod of failing to hobble them correctly.  And why the Hound and Arya walk the last leg of the trip to the Vales. 

6-2-13

I just received notice that 6 Icelandic horses were used in The Hobbit from 5 different owners from all over New Zealand.  I am waiting to see if I get permission to post the entire email.  No chestnut Icelandic horse was used in the film so it looks like Bilbo is not riding an Icelandic horse.  ;-)

You may also want to check my posting

http://blessiblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/icelandic-horses-in-hobbit-and-their.html

for details and pictures on how the steeds the dwaves ride are horses made up to look like Icelandic horse while Bilbo rides a real Icelandic horse.

Below is a series of posts linking all the stories that I could find abouut Icelandic horses in The Hobbit movie and the HBO Game of Thrones.

12-9-12

The American Human Society, whivh was invited to oversee the health and safety of the animals used in the filming of "The Hobbit" has put out a release on how it protected the animals.  The AHS also discusses how animals died on an off-site boarding facility.

"Our stringent Guidelines for the Safe Use of Animals in Filmed Media were rigorously applied and followed during production. However, in 2011 while filming was being conducted in New Zealand, the production company made us aware that some of the animal actors being used for the production had died while on a farm that was being used only as housing. None of the animals in question died during filming action or were being used as animal actors when they died. As our jurisdiction does not encompass off set activities, our on-set representative had not previously conducted a review of the farm. Nevertheless, after the deaths, upon the request by the production company, we traveled to the farm and conducted a thorough examination. We made safety recommendations to the animals’ living areas. The production company followed our recommendations and upgraded fence and farm housing, among other things. Working together with the production company, we were able to increase safety for animals on the farm."

Source: http://www.americanhumanefilmtv.org/reviews/movie-review-the-hobbit-an-unexpected-journey/ 

12-3-2012 Update

In the Winter USIHC Quarterly, Lisa Keller in her article "Land of the Hobbits," provides a clue about  a possible source of the Icelandic horses used in the soon-to-be-released Hobbit movie which was mostly filmed in New Zealand.  Lisa Keller vacationed in New Zealand and decided she had to visit the largest Icelandic horse farm in New Zealand, Neđri Bakki (meaning Down Under at the Edge of a Stream), whose web address is listed below:

http://icehorse.co.nz/

The owners Kenneth and Snejina hail from Denmark and Bulgaria.  In the interview, the owners Kenneth and Snejina discuss their experience with horses and Icelandics, farm services, and  their goals for the Icelandic horse in New Zealand.  When asked about Icelandic horses being used in the filming of The Hobbit, Kenneth replies: "Unfortunately, we are not allowed to comment on that.  We will all need to wait till "The Hobbit" is released."

One must admit that their farm photos of Icelandic horses look just like Hobbit horses living in the Shire.

And for those of you in the US, you may want to join the United States Icelandic Horse Congress so that you can get copies of this quarterly full of informative fun articles about the Icelandic horse--and possibly a future, more detailed article about Icelandic horses in The Hobbit movie.

http://www.icelandics.org/quarterly.php

Note:  As a volunteer writer, I do provide the occassional article for the USIHC quarterly.

11-26-12 Update

Not all is well in Hobbitland.  Nick Perry in an Associated Press article reports "Animal wranglers involved in the making of "The Hobbit" movie trilogy say the production company is responsible for the deaths of up to 27 animals, largely because they were kept at a farm filled with bluffs, sinkholes and other 'death traps.'"

Source: http://movies.yahoo.com/news/wranglers-hobbit-animals-died-unsafe-farm-084335908.html

No animals were harmed on the set of the film but it appears that there is no oversight at the stables or sites where animals are housed when not on the film set.  Horses Rainbow, Doofus, Claire, Zepplin, and Molly were seriously injured or died off-site.  Based on the names, none of the horses appear to be Icelandics.

Peter Jackson and company claim that exceptional measures were taken to protect all animals used on the set.  However, having some sort of oversight of animals off the set seems like a hole in their plans to protect animals.

Source:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-20406456

Although it is too late to help the animals used in The Hobbit film, it is a wake up call to help animals in future films.  Here is the email site of the New Zealand Humane Society.

http://www.humanesociety.org.nz/

10-30-12

For those of you interested in the origins of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, there are multiple connections to Iceland.  Nancy Marie Brown has written Song of the Vikings about the life of the Snorri Sturluson.  In the 1200s AD, Snorri collected the myths and folklore of medieval Scandinavia into the Prose Edda, one of the sources of inspiration to JRR Tolken when he wrote his novels.  As Nancy discusses, Tolkein even got many of his characters' names directly from the Prose Edda.  See how many names from The Hobbit you can recognize below.

"And these, says the Sibyl, are their names:

Nýi and Nidi, | Nordri and Sudri,
Austri, Vestri, | Althjófr, Dvalinn;
Nár, Náinn, | Nípingr, Dáinn,
Bifurr, Báfurr, | Bömburr, Nóri,
Óri, Ónarr, | Óinn, Mjödvitnir,
Viggr and Gandálfr, | Vindálfr, Thorinn,
Fíli, Kíli, | Fundinn, Váli;
Thrór, Thróinn, | Thekkr, Litr and Vitr,
Nýr, Nýrádr, | Rekkr, Rádsvidr.

Snorri himself had a fascinating life.  He was a poet, historian, warrior, lawspeaker, diplomat, and politician.  In Iceland, Snorri acted as both an agent of the King of Norway and he attempted to consolidate power over all of Iceland, which ended with his assassination.

2-14-12

Here is more footage about the filming of Game of Thrones in Iceland.  You will see Icelandic horses in the background.  The horses were probably the only cast members not freezing during filming.

2-3-12

There is a wonderful site dedicated to discussing news about HBO filming of Game of Thones while providing a place for fans to discuss and debate topic from the series of novels collectively called A Song of Fire and Ice. 

http://www.westeros.org/GoT/

Elio, the webmaster at Westeros, has given me permission to share two screen shots from Season 2 of HBO's Game of Thrones.  Both shots are from Iceland.  The first shot shows Jon Snow (played by Kit Harington)  looking out over the icebound vastness Beyond the Wall.  This part of the script was filmed in Iceland in winter so the scenery is so dramatic that little CGI was required.

And here is a glimpse of the Icelandic horses in their role as pack animals or garons for the Wildlings.

1/29/12

HBO has released the new trailer for Season 2 of Game of Thrones.  The beyond the wall chapters of the book were filmed in Iceland in winter.  And as you can see in this trailer, the scenery in Iceland lends the footage a fantastical aura.  You can see the wildlings leading Icelandic horses around the 52 second marker.

12/21/11  I have decided to keep a running posting on this topic since it is so cool.   You can see more Icelandic horses in Peter Jackson's Production Video, Part 5 (see link below).  It is well worth watching the video to see Elijah Wood take a tour of the Hobbiton, with its 44 permanently installed hobbit holes that will remain after shooting ends.  The New Zealand Department of Tourism will be promoting the site.  Anyone for a tour of New Zealand?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_e2pcUSXLAU

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Here is a link to the Hobbit Movie Trailer.  You will see Icelandics!!!  How awesome.

The film industry has finally figured out the appeal of Icelandic horses, who  definitely have an elfish or Hobbit-like look.  Some Iceys are scheduled to make appearances in two major films--The Hobbit and HBO's Game of Thrones.

The Hobbit

I couldn't find my English version
 of the Hobbit.

Peter Jackson is using thirteen Icelandics in the filming of The Hobbit in New Zealand.  Per Cali Madincea of New Line Cinema, "'The look of the Icelandic horse, which grows a thick coat in the winter, was one of the things that attracted the attention of the producers. Another important aspect of the Icelandic horse is its endurance and strength.' She added that the tölt, the gait particular to the breed, played a part in the decision as well 'This soft gait moves them right along, which helps an actor in full armour stay close to Gandalf, who's riding a large horse.'"

The Hobbit is scheduled to be released in two parts, December 2012 and December 2013.  My friends and I have already set up a date to go to see that movie.

Source:  http://grapevine.is/Home/ReadArticle/Icelandic-Horses-Used-In-Hobbit-Film

Game of Thrones
George R.R. Martin's multi-book series A Song of Ice and Fire has often been compared to Lord of the Rings--except that there are not purely good versus pure evil characters--characters are more gray, grittier, and definitely bloodier in Martin's books.  I have read the first 5 books in the series and highly recommend them.

HBO made the first book Game of Thrones into a very successful 10-part TV series.  Filming has started on part 2 of the series A Clash of Kings.  Events "beyond the wall" are being filmed in Iceland.  Fifteen Icelandic horses are included in the shoot, including a 28-year old horse Randver.  "Randver has the right qualities and considerable experience for the part; it has both been on stage in Reykjavík City Theater and at Hotel Ísland."

Source: http://www.icelandreview.com/icelandreview/daily_news/Icelandic_Horses_to_Play_in_Game_of_Thrones_0_384388.news.aspx

You can read in Icelandic about the Icelandic horses being used in the film at this source:

http://www.visir.is/haetti-vid-ad-loga-randver/article/2011711119981

Although no Icelandic horses appear in the following clip, you do get some views of the spectacular scenery from Icelandic that will appear in Season 2 of Game of Thrones.  After a lot of commercials, the program picks up again around minute 15:00.

Sources:  http://visir.is/section/MEDIA99&fileid=SRC3B2C1862-00D1-49E3-99C3-8ABBD74A3210

I am so looking forward to seeing the Icelands in Season 2 of HBO's The Game of Thrones.