Íslandshestar is unusual among riding tour operators anywhere in the world: it is owned and run not by a single company but by a network of Icelandic farming families, spread across the country, each hosting tours from their own farm on the land they know intimately. Founded in 1982 by three families and grown steadily since, Íslandshestar now offers everything from one-day rides from its riding centre near Reykjavík to ten-to-twelve-day highland expeditions, all led by the farmers themselves rather than hired guides.
This direct-from-farmer model means genuinely personal, unmediated hospitality — riding tours that begin at someone’s actual home, on horses the family bred and trained themselves, through landscape that family has known for generations. With options ranging from Golden Circle Day rides to multi-day highland crossings tracing paths shaped by waterfalls, glaciers, and geothermal hot springs, Íslandshestar offers a way into Iceland that few visitors ever experience.
The Experience
Your tour begins not at a generic office but at someone’s actual farm — Haukur and his family at Hvammur in the northwest, leading you through the Vatnsdalur and Víðidalur valleys; Hannes and Sophie at Kálfhóll in the south, taking you past Geysir and into the volcanic drama of Landmannalaugar; Halldór and Elín in the northeast, sharing sights most visitors never see. Riding an Icelandic horse for the first time changes your sense of what a horse can feel like — the breed’s unique four-beat tölt makes for a smoothness that holds up even across long distances, and you’ll typically swap mounts once or twice a day, riding alongside a herd running free beside you.
Your days shift constantly: black sand beaches perfect for a fast tölt along the shoreline, Viking-age fortresses like Borgarvirki rising out of nowhere, geothermal hot springs waiting exactly when your body wants them most. In the right season, you might find yourself pulled into a genuine sheep round-up — real Icelandic farm work, not a performance staged for visitors.
Evenings often bring something unplanned and entirely welcome: Haukur picking up a guitar for an impromptu singalong, your hosts sharing decades of local knowledge over dinner, and, if you’re lucky, the northern lights arriving overhead as the day’s unscripted finale. You leave feeling less like a customer and more like you were, briefly, folded into someone’s family and their corner of Iceland.
About Íslandshestar
Íslandshestar was founded in 1982 by three Icelandic families and has grown, over more than four decades, into a genuinely unique cooperative model: a company owned entirely by the farmers who operate its tours, each running routes from their own home farm rather than a centralised base. This structure means guests buy directly from the people who know the land, the weather, and the horses — no intermediaries, no generic guiding, just generations of accumulated local knowledge shared firsthand.
The horses themselves are central to this identity. Descended from horses brought by Viking settlers over a thousand years ago and kept genetically pure ever since, Icelandic horses are raised, bred, and trained by the farmers themselves — not simply purchased for tour use, but genuinely part of each family’s life and history. That care shows in the animals’ famously gentle temperament and in the depth of connection many guests report forming with a particular horse over the course of a multi-day tour.
What sets Íslandshestar apart within Iceland’s crowded riding-tour landscape is this unmatched authenticity — tours that begin and end at a real farm, led by the people whose family has worked that land for generations, offering a version of Iceland that package tourism simply cannot replicate.
Our Stewardship
Íslandshestar is structured as a cooperative of Icelandic farming families rather than a centralised commercial operator, with each family riding its own land using horses it has bred and raised. The Icelandic horse is a genetically closed, protected native breed, and the company’s operating model is built around sustaining the traditional farming and breeding practices that keep its bloodlines intact.
