Gjöf is very well known by many of our returning multi day tour guests, and more recently, she always has been a favorite during the day tours for experienced riders at home. This grand old lady might start to count her years now, but in no means she has become a slow beginners horse just yet! After mentioning her in the Hetja story, I think it is now time to give her her own blog page because she is one of a kind really.
Gjöf was born in 2000 at the farm Garðsá and came to Saltvík as a young horse back in the days when Bjarni bought many horses from Garðsá farm to build up the great herd of tourhorses a bit faster than by breeding them all himself 😉
Before she started joining he multi day tours full time, she got 3 foals for Saltvík. Two of those 3 foals we still have at Saltvík; Fákur born in 2009 and Hetja born in 2010. They both inherited the looks from their mother. They are all brown/black (brún(n)) and pretty ´round´. Or should we say they have heavy bones 😉 ? Fákur is unbelievable that way. He works every tour all summer long every summer and never seems to loose any energy nor weight. Gjöf herself and daughter Hetja also never are of the skinny type.
Gjöf is a real front horse with endless smooth tölt and seemingly never ending energy. Her tölt is just so smooth and comfortable, always a joy to ride. Later, when she approached her 20s, she was sometimes ridden in the back of the herd, but it never really was her favorite place to be. In the front she was happy and she just didn‘t think the back was a place for her to be!
And then, in the early summer 2021, she was with some other horses at a field close to the river Laxá in Aðaldalur where we were keeping some of our horses during the slower covid times, when we got a phonecall from a farmer in that area that one of our horses was in the field with his stallion.
The stallion was in a field on the other side of a side-arm of Laxá river. In Iceland, rivers are often used as fences, especially if there is no good place to enter the river/water from the field. This usually is enough to keep horses in the field. And at the place where Gjöf at that moment was with the other Saltvík horses, it indeed had always been enough, as the riverside is very swampy and horses normally don‘t like to go there.
However, Gjöf saw (and smelled/heard?) a handsome boy on the other side of the water, and swam there to check him out. It really was a baby boy, as the stallion was only 2 years old, but that clearly didn‘t matter at all. She was ready to have another foal. Within 4 hours after Gjöf made the crossing to the field of the stallion, Bjarni was there to fetch her, but too late; she was already pregnant!
So in 2022 we got a 4th foal from her: Vaka. Another brown/black one. We‘re slowly starting her training this year.
After this year break to raise her foal, Gjöf came back to the multi day tours for 1 more year. Being fit and feisty right away. It is so amazing to see how those horses never seem to loose their shape and stamina. Not after their winter break of 5-7 months, and not even after getting a foal and not being ridden for over a year!
From 2024 on though, she got an easier job at home as one of the horses riding with our guests at home on the 3-5 day Comfort tours without the herd, so it‘s less speed and less kms of riding. Which is just enough for her now she is in her mid-20s. But still she is always forward and full of energy! Her face is becoming grey now, but that is basically the only sign of her getting old. Once you‘re on her back, you won‘t feel that she‘s going towards her 30s now!
Let‘s hope she will stay with us for quite a few more years to come…
