Icelandic colors

Last winter, Tiffany made an Icelandic horse to show at BreyerWest. She painted it a gorgeous, deep chestnut splashed white. I can not tell you how much I wanted to buy it.

I thought, "What am I going to do if I go to Iceland and my horse looks exactly like that?"

It turns out, I didn't have to worry.

I saw a lot of horses when I was in Iceland.

I rode a lot, too.

There were over three hundred fifty horses at Eldhestar, where we stayed.

Plus, there were horses in every nearly every field next to every road along which we rode or drove.

So many Icelandic horses!

And not one of them was splashed white.

So disappointing!

Icelandic horses come in a multitude of colors, including but not necessarily limited to black, bay, chestnut, gray, palomino, buckskin, cremello, perlino, roan, dun, silver dapple and various pinto patterns including splashed white.

I didn't see any roans or obvious double dilutes (perlino, cremello) at Eldhestar.

Nearly everything else was in the mix.

There were definitely some plain blacks and bays.

However, the predominant colors were shades of dun...

and silver.

There were some chestnuts as well. However, on closer inspection a large percentage of those were actually bay silvers. 

And let me tell you, there were a lot of bay silvers.

One thing there was not a lot of was white markings.

Like Tinna, many of the horses had a few white hairs on their foreheads, but actual stars and blazes were few and far between.

In fact, other than the tobianos...

I think Gullblesi was the only horse I saw with a big blaze. Even Störmfrid's big, well defined star seemed like an outlier.

White legs were even rarer. Again excluding the tobianos , I don't think I saw a single sock the whole time I was in Iceland.

Generally speaking, I like chrome, but in truth, these horses don't need it.

The Icelandic rainbow.

I still wish I could have bought Tiffany's splashed white pony, but someday soon, I will have a different Tiffany Icelandic horse, with dun and silver and almost no white.