I am Fran Bundtzen, and I live outside of Fairbanks with my husband, Tom, daughter Sarah, and three Icelandic Horses. I am an artist and a woodcarver, and I love working at home because it gives me more time to spend with my horses. I can set my own hours and have the freedom to ride when the weather is nice. I am the secretary for the Alaskan Icelandic Horse Association, and I have been the editor of our club’s newsletter since 2005.

We bought our first Icelandic on Christmas Eve, 1991, and he was the best Christmas present I ever got. We were only the second family in the Fairbanks area to own an Icelandic. Now there are over a dozen Icelandic Horse owners and at least 25 Icelandic horses that I am aware of in the Fairbanks North Star Borough.

Our first horse was born at the Icelandic Horse Farm when it was still in Edmonton, Alberta. Christine Schwartz, who is a trainer at the farm was up here to give a clinic a few years ago. She remembered Ofeigur well. She said he was the first Icelandic foal she ever saw born. It was in the middle of the winter, the mare was due to foal soon, and they went down to bring her in to the barn. They found her already in the last stages of labor, so she had her foal in the snow out in the field. The foal trotted back to the barn through the deep snow behind his mom and earned his name, Ofeigur, or in Icelandic “One who needs to live”.

Larry and Debbie Miller from Healy, Alaska, bought him as a 6 year old. He was a playmate for their kids growing up, and he was used as a hunting horse, carrying moose, caribou, and even a bear home from the hunt. When the Miller kids grew up and left home, and Debbie developed an allergy to horse dander, Ofeigur came up for sale. He was 12 at that time. Ofeigur and I share a birthday, January 6, and he is the same age as my daughter (he will be 30 in a few days), so he was fated to be our horse.

He was as close to a bombproof horse as you are ever likely to get. He is not your typical Icelandic in that he has always been a slowpoke, even when he was in his prime, and he rarely tolts. But since we were novice riders and new to horse ownership, he was a absolute treasure.

The saddle that came with him was uncomfortable as sitting on a board, so that first winter, we rode him bareback. He was dive-bombed by a raven who had some type of mental problem, had strange dog teams wrapped around his legs on three different occasions (he stood like a rock while I jumped down and helped the mushers untangle the dogs), and when startled by a bicycle whizzing silently by us from behind, his idea of bolting consisted of breaking into a trot for 20 feet.

The other nice thing about his slow gait was that my 12 year old daughter and I could go out with him together and we could take turns riding him and walking alongside. We had a blast with him, and he was so easy going that our ignorance about horses was not a problem. He loved to ride in a trailer, he stood well for the vet, and the farrier. The perfect first horse! Now at the age of 30, we rarely ride him, but we still pick him to give pony rides to kids, because he is so steady and reliable. He spends most of his time eating, and I think he is enjoying his retirement.

We purchased our second horse from the Castor family, also from Healy, in 1993. She is a mare called Drifa which means “Snowdrift” in Icelandic. Since she is a very dark bay, almost black, the name seemed a little odd. We thought it might refer to the white patch on her face. Turns out, that her registered name is Nott which means “Night” in Icelandic, and that name makes more sense.

The Castors renamed her because they thought the name Nott sounded a little negative, and they liked the sound of “Drifa”. She also came from the Icelandic Horse Farm, and she was trailered up to Healy with her mother when Drifa was just a tiny baby. She was 6 when we bought her and green-broke.

Drifa was a real step up for us because, unlike Ofeigur, she liked to go fast. I spent the first year teaching her how to walk. She was also much more flighty than Ofeigur, hated getting into trailers, disliked crossing water, including even walking on squishy trails, and hated getting shots. The Castors were very upfront with all these problems, but we wanted a second horse so I could go riding with Sarah and Ofeigur. I figured that with training and work we would solve the problems.

Now at the age of 22, she is my favorite riding horse. She has always been independent, and is happy to hit the trails with me if we are riding alone. She now walks calmly into the trailer (that took a lot of work), and after years of riding down the swampy trails in our valley, she is not so hydrophobic. As she matured, got more experience, and developed a trust in me, she rarely gets scared of things out on the trail. I also now know her body language well enough to know when to ask her to approach something that is worrying her, and when to slide off and lead her past whatever is bothering her. She is sensitive and responsive and is a real lady, and I love her to bits. She does still hate visits from the vet. She will come right up to anyone else who visits, including the farrier, but as soon as the vet’s vehicle pulls into the driveway, she runs off to the far corner of the pen. She has an obsessive fear of the needle, and I suspect that is one fault we will never overcome.

In 1996, we made our third Icelandic acquisition, a filly less than a year old named Tofa which means “Fox” in Icelandic. She is a red bay bred by Robin Marquiss, here in the Fairbanks area. I now had a new challenge, training a young horse from scratch. I didn’t know if I could do it, but I was going to try. I had been very interested in the TTEAM training method. TTEAM, or the Tellington Touch Equine Awareness Method, was developed by Linda Tellington-Jones, who is a sister of Robyn Hood who owns the Icelandic Horse Farm in British Columbia. I audited a clinic given by Ellie Jensen many years ago, and I was impressed with the changes I saw in both the horses and riders attending the clinic. I checked out TTEAM videos from the local library and read a few of the books. Armed with these, I figured that with 4 years to work with Tofa before she reached riding age, I could manage.

Tofa was a headstrong filly and very opinionated, not at all like the sensitive ladylike Drifa, but she was people oriented, not easily frightened by much of anything, and using the TTEAM approach, she was very easy to work with. I spent the first 4 years teaching her to lead, carry the saddle, wear the bridle, hours of ground driving, and when it came time to finally climb on her back, it was almost a nonevent, as far as she was concerned.

She is very bonded to Drifa, and my main problem with her has been her reluctance to go out on the trail alone. If Drifa is along, she is a great trail horse, though. I have had some problems finding a saddle that will fit her. I use a Hrafn saddle for Drifa, and when Tofa was younger and more svelte, I rode her in a Hrafn also. As she matured, and developed a more matronly figure, her saddle started to pinch her shoulders, and when I took her to the Mandy Pretty TTEAM clinic in 2007, Mandy confirmed my suspicion that I needed to find her a new saddle. My friend Alys, who was also at that clinic lent me her treeless Sensation Saddle, and within 5 minutes, I knew I had found the saddle for Tofa. Instead of taking little mincing steps, she started to relax and lengthen her stride, and I vowed that I would not ride her again until I bought a Sensation for her. This last summer, once I got my year’s supply of hay in, I had enough money left over in my horse fund to buy one. I got it this fall, and I look forward to lots of trail rides with Tofa next summer.

As I write this, we are experiencing our typical January cold spell, and it is 38 below zero in Fairbanks. Times like this make me really appreciate owning Icelandics. They are tough, hardy, easy keepers. A few years ago a friend’s daughter had an Arabian. During a similar cold spell, her Arabian was blanketed and eating 36 pounds of hay a day, plus grain, and shivering and losing weight. My three Icelandics together were eating 36 pounds of hay, with no grain, blanketed only in their fuzzy coats, and NOT shivering, AND maintaining their weight. Icelandics are great horses for Alaska! Getting involved with Icelandics and the Alaskan Icelandic Horse Association has been a wonderful experience for me. The adventure continues.