This message is from: PHILLIP Odden <n...@norskwoodworks.com>
This message is from Phillip Odden in Northwestern Wisconsin where the weather is perfect. It is nice to return home from the Fjord Horse, Farming, and Folk Art tour arranged by the Norwegian American museum of Decorah, Iowa. I was the guide for the trip that included 26 people all together. We had a Grand Time. I will try to describe a few of the highlights. We started in Oslo where we had an exclusive, ( reserved for Royalty and Heads of State ) tour of the Viking Ship Museum given by the the wood carver at the museum. We learned what the horse meant to the people of the Viking era. We had a personal tour of the Parliament in Oslo as well. After leaving Oslo we visited some farms in the area north of Oslo where the larger farms in Norway exist and we learned about the horses that are used in that area in the past and present. At each of the farms we had very nice meals served. In the end the tour became a food extravaganza. As we traveled North we took in a few museums where they used horses in ways that were common during the horse power era. In Gudbrandsdalen we stayed at some rural hotels that featured local music and offered us the chance to meet and pet some local Fjord Horses. Some of us also took a trail ride into the high mountains above the tree line where the caribou moss grows. We stayed at hotels that were decorated with wonderful folk art and fine art that depicted rural life and the magnificent scenery in Norway. We visited farms that had been established for well over 1000 years with written records from the 14th century. We visited churches built in the 13th century. All along the way there were opportunities to do some shopping and we ate way too often. Some lucky women found very attractive silver broaches with a Fjord Horse motif at one stop. During the last part of the trip we traveled the Fjord country of the west coast. This is where the Fjord Horses have always been the most popular because of the terrain and size of the farms. Again we visited several farms as well as the Fjord Horse Center at Nordfjordeid. At the Fjord Horse center we were treated with a performance by a wonderful rider and a driver with two talented Fjords. We saw the great modern stallion Fjølestaen and we learned about the frozen semen program the Fjord Horse Center is involved with. We saw offspring of Perakrossen and the three year old Uno, two stallions that will be offered through frozen semen in the US next year. Contact me if you are interested. Later we traveled to the Mare show and evaluation in Førde where we saw some very nice three year old mares. They were doing their performance tests as well as their three year old confirmation test. In Norway only licensed stallions can be used. The evaluations offer an opportunity to evaluate the offspring of the mares and stallions for confirmation and performance. The Norwegian Fjords are becoming much more athletic with much better ability to move well in the last years. We were also able to visit a farm in the Nordfjord area that has been breeding fjords for several generations. They had many volumes of record books and research books that were published on Fjord Horses. With this contact I have the opportunity to translate more historical information on the Fjord Horse. I also met a member of a team of researchers that are trying to determine the in-breeding coefficient for Fjord Horses in Norway. That information should be available this fall or winter. At the Agricultural school at Voss we saw the 19 year old mare Daisy. Daisy is the mother of 7 stallions that have been licensed in Norway and she was involved in the riding, driving, and horsemanship program at the school in Voss. It was a great surprise to have the opportunity to see this important mare. It often rains on the west coast of Norway and rain it did. The many water falls were spectacular with all the extra water in the rivers. We visited a museum where we saw the pack saddles and early riding saddles used with Fjord Horses. We saw the snow shoes Fjords would wear during the winter time and we saw the wooden containers they would carry up and down the steep mountains. We saw lots of photos of Fjords involved in the transportation of tourists over difficult terrain on very small roads suspended over deep blue fjords. I could go on but at least you get the picture. We had a good time. Important FjordHorse List Links: Subscription Management: http://tinyurl.com/5msa7e FH-L Archives: http://tinyurl.com/rcepw Classified Ads: http://tinyurl.com/5b5g2f
