The Icelandic Phallological Museum claims that it exists for the purpose of genuinely serious study into the field of phallology in an organized, scientific fashion but you might not be inclined to agree with that when reaching the end of the tour and ending up in the predictable souvenir shop where rather tasteless and inappropriate items for sale included key rings and bottle openers each moulded into the inevitable shape of a human penis.
About this time of the year I start to look back over my posts to review what has been going on. One of the things that I like to do is to take a look at the search questions that seem to bring web-surfers by the site and take a look at some of the more bizarre and unusual.
One of my most successful posts is about the day I attended a Buckingham Palace Garden Party and I get lots of odd Google referrals about this one. This year my favourite just has to be – “do I get expenses to attend royal garden party?”
Let me take a moment here to explain. Just to be invited to a Buckingham Palace Garden party is a bit special in itself and believe me there is going to be a lot of expense involved – new suit, new outfit, overnight stay in London, taxi fares etc. and most people would gladly deal with this just to be part of the occasion so I have to say that expecting the Queen to pick up the bill sounds rather republican to me and whoever asked this should not have had an invite in the first place.
Next up, I really like this one – “what did the captain wear on the Titanic?”
I visited Belfast recently and went to see the Titanic Exhibition and Museum. It was a super place and I recommend anyone to go there and I think what I learned on that visit may just well help here.
Around the exhibition there are lots of pictures of Captain Smith in his White Star Line uniform so I am forced to conclude that except when he went to bed and most likely put on a pair of pyjamas that this was his favourite form of dress. Another thing that I can be certain of is that Captain Smith didn’t wear a lifebelt because after the Titanic struck the iceberg he went down with his ship and drowned!
This being a Travel Blog I often get advice requests and this year I have picked out these two related topics – “What to do in Croatia if it rains?” and “Will I need my umbrella in Burgos?” I am not a weather expert of course but then neither are most of the people who claim to be – has anyone ever seen an accurate TV weather forecast? Bearing this in mind my answer to both these questions is find somewhere to shelter and then let me remind everyone – it doesn’t rain in bars.
When I travel to Europe I rather like hiring cars but what I don’t like is the hassle of arranging car insurance. I have had a lot of trouble getting past the car rental clerk and taking possession of the keys so I am well able to answer this next one – “how much is gravel protection and sand and ash protection in Iceland” and the answer is quite a lot, probably more than the daily hire rate for the vehicle.
Sixt in Iceland have come up with a brilliant wheeze. I thought that I had purchased fully comprehensive insurance but the desk clerk told me that cars suffered so many stone chips because of the gravel roads in Iceland that this had now been excluded and could be purchased at an additional cost of €9 a day under the description ‘gravel damage’ and just to be safe I agreed to buy it.
Then it became almost surreal when he explained that further cover was available at €10 a day for volcano damage. Volcano damage – WTF?
Upon enquiry he told me that if a volcano explodes it can generate enough heat to strip the paint off the car and that this was not covered either. Well, I considered this for a moment and came to the conclusion that if I was close enough to an exploding volcano for it to strip the paint off the car then it was almost certain that I was likely to be in a lot of trouble and great personal danger and the last thing that I was going to be worried about as my flesh melted into a puddle of grease was the condition of the paintwork on the hire car (gravel chipped or not) so I sensibly declined the offer to purchase the additional cover and quickly paid up just in case he next tried to sell me snow or rain insurance in case the car got wet!
I can always guarantee something cropping up about Ryanair and cheap flights.
I first wrote on this subject in 2009 and it immediately started getting hundreds of hits and then in 2011 it just stopped completely. I reviewed and reposted it and changed the title from the specific ‘Travel Tips when Flying Ryanair’ to the more general title that it has now and hey presto the hits started coming again. – Travel Tips when Flying Budget Airlines.
My favourite this year is “Ryanair seat 08f” which, to be honest is way to specific a request for me to be able to deal with and provide a satisfactory response.
Sex always crops up of course because it is estimated that well over half of all web searches are about this subject. This is an odd one though – “penis shaped door knob”, who for goodness sake is likely to type that enquiry into a search engine? Interestingly however I once worked with someone who used the office internet to make the enquiry ‘knobs and knockers’. She was restoring an old Welsh Dresser at the time and although her enquiry was completely innocent she had some explaining to do to the IT section when she received the unexpected results of her search.
Not being an anatomist I am not an authority on penises and not being a manager of a Home Depot I am not an expert on door furniture of any shape but I did visit the Penis Museum in Reykjavik and this is probably close enough to have recorded the visit to the blog.
I am going to finish with this one and because I simply do not have the answer I am going to ask you all out there if you can help – “Does a dog die if it doesn’t have sex?”
Here are the previous posts in this series of weird internet searches…
Sometimes when travelling it is possible to come across a real treat…
“…collecting penises is like collecting anything. You can never stop, you can never catch up, you can always get a new one, a better one a bigger size or better shape…” Museum owner, Sigurður Hjartarson
In the hotel lobby there was a selection of attractions leaflets and one was advertising a rather odd museum so we thought we might take a look. It wasn’t hard to find and and immediately grabbed our attention and it seemed just too bizarre to miss so we approached the door, turned the knob and went inside.
The Icelandic Phallological Museum contains a collection of more than two hundred and fifteen penises and adjacent body parts from almost all of the land and sea mammals in Iceland including fifty six specimens belonging to seventeen different kinds of whale and thirty-six belonging to seven different kinds of seal and walrus. In addition it has a collection of non-Icelandic specimens including a giraffe, an elephant and a polar bear!
It was getting close to closing time and there were only a few visitors inside hanging around the exhibition cases. Two young girls were constantly giggling and not taking it at all seriously, there was a man with a limp, an elderly couple looked thoroughly bemused by it all and half a dozen people from a tour group were wandering around rather self-consciously. For my part I had not seen so many male reproductive organs since I inadvertently strayed onto a naturist beach on the Spanish island of Fuerteventura!
The exhibits ranged from some of the largest to some of the smallest in the animal kingdom. The largest is a portion of a blue whale’s penis measuring one hundred and seventy centimetres long and weighing seventy kilograms but is in fact only the end bit as the entire organ which in its full glory would have been about five metres long would take up most of the room in the small museum! At the other end of the scale the penis of a hamster at only two millimetres is the smallest item in the collection and needs a magnifying glass to see it – and, before anyone else mentions it – rather like the magnifying glass that I keep in the bathroom at home!
The bit I liked best was the amusing “folklore section” exhibiting mythological penises with specimens allegedly taken from elves, trolls and kelpies. The Elf penis is supposed to be impressively huge but you can’t see it of course because in Icelandic folklore elves and trolls are invisible so it sits mockingly in an empty glass jar. It’s a good joke!
For many years, the museum apparently tried to get a human penis but was only able to obtain testicles and a foreskin from two separate donors and only recently has it acquired the full article. I’m afraid that I don’t have any more details on exactly why this is so difficult to accomplish. The Icelandic donor was a ninety-five year-old man who was said to have been a bit of a gigolo in his youth and wanted to donate his penis to the museum to ensure his “eternal fame”.
As he got older he apparently began to worry that his penis was shrinking and he became concerned that his pickled prize would not do him full justice and remember him at his best as it were (a bit like each new Cliff Richard album). He was right to be concerned because after he died in 2011 his penis was surgically removed so that it could be added to the museum’s collection but the procedure was not entirely successful and the contents of the jar were completely unrecognisable (see picture above).
The Icelandic Phallological Museum claims that it exists for the purpose of genuinely serious study into the field of phallology in an organized, scientific fashion but you might not be inclined to agree with that when reaching the end of the tour and ending up in the inevitable souvenir shop where rather tasteless and inappropriate items for sale included key rings and bottle openers each moulded in the shape of a penis that were drawing more uncontrolled laughter from the two young girls.
I don’t regularly buy souvenirs but if I was going to buy a mug from Reykjavik I think I would be more inclined to go for one with a picture of the Sólfar Suncraft or Leif Ericson in preference to one with an image of a male private part.
So we left the museum that I am confident to declare the oddest in the World, even more bizarre (although I haven’t been there) than the Kansas Barbed Wire Museum in the USA, the Dog Collar Museum in the UK or the Toilet Museum in New Delhi, India. In Amsterdam there is a Museum of Handbags and Purses! If anyone has any alternative suggestions by-the-way then I am happy to consider them for inclusion in this list!
Anyone for Renskaret Svinebog?
When travelling in a foreign country I always like to drop in and see what unusual items I can find on the shelves. Disappointingly on this occasion everything seemed to be rather familiar with a range of items that I might expect to find in any UK supermarket including rather oddly a freezer cabinet full of Iceland (the UK supermarket Iceland) frozen pizzas.
Eventually we came across the chilled section and here were the sort of items that I was hoping to find and which soon had me giggling like the two girls in the penis museum. Here were some frighteningly unappetising sounding salad spreads with names that sounded as though they should be more appropriately being exhibited next door and if you have ever wondered why sometimes products change their name to be more universally acceptable then here is an example why…
Are you tempted by Laxasalat?
I have been posting here since 2009 and for the first time in six years I have had a request. My blogging friend Sue from Travel Tales of Life has asked me to put together of top ten things to do in Iceland and I am therefore delighted to offer these suggestions.
This may seem rather too obvious to mention but I do so because some friends of mine recently visited Iceland and stayed in Kevlavik. The man at the hotel gave then some useful travel tips but bizarrely suggested that it wasn’t really worth going to Reykjavik because it is just a city. Now, I would guess that unless all you want to see are whales and puffins then a visit to the capital of the country is on everyone’s itinerary. If you ever stay in that particular hotel then I urge you to ignore the ‘don’t bother with Reykjavik’ advice!
So, some top things to do in Reykjavik:
On the seafront along a granite boulder promenade you will find the Sólfar Suncraft, which is a stainless steel 1986 sculpture of a Viking long boat that occupies an impressive spot overlooking the bay and Mount Esja on the other side.
Iceland is proud of its Viking heritage because the country was first colonised by Norwegians in the ninth century and the story goes that the first permanent settler was a man called Ingólfur Arnarson who landed here in 871 and named the location Reykjavik, which means smoky bay, on account of the comforting plumes of hot steam that were escaping from the nearby hot springs.
Hallgrímskirkja is the Lutheran Cathedral and the tallest building in the city which took nearly forty years to build and was consecrated in 1986. The design is said to be based on a geyser plume or a lava flow but if you ask me it looks more like a space shuttle about to blast off.
The main purpose for visiting the cathedral is to take the lift to the observation tower at the top of the seventy-three metre tall tower. It cost 700 krona (about £3) and it was worth every one because from the top there are glorious uninterrupted views in all directions, to the sea in the west, the glaciers in the north, the islands in the south and the ragged coastline to the east.
I am confident to declare the Penis Museum the oddest in the World, even more bizarre (although I haven’t been there) than the Kansas Barbed Wire Museum in the USA, the Dog Collar Museum in the UK or the Toilet Museum in New Delhi, India. If anyone has any alternative suggestions by-the-way then I am happy to consider them for inclusion in this list!
“…collecting penises is like collecting anything. You can never stop, you can never catch up, you can always get a new one, a better one a bigger size or better shape…” Museum owner, Sigurður Hjartarson
Beyond Reykjavik…
The hidden people are called Huldufólk and are special here and it is said often appear in the dreams of Icelanders. What makes seeing them difficult is that they are invisible and Icelanders prefer big people to be careful in case you accidentally step on one and they even frown upon the throwing of stones in case you inadvertently hit one of these small invisible people.
These are said to be thousands of elves who make their homes in Iceland’s wilderness and coexist alongside the Icelandic people and in a survey conducted by the University of Iceland in 2007 it found that sixty-two percent of the respondents thought it was at least possible that they exist and if you only need one reason to visit Iceland then that must surely be it!
Unfortunately the sighting of this natural phenomena cannot be guaranteed, it is not like the Blackpool Illuminations, they can’t just be turned on and off for the benefit of tourists, no one is assured to see them (unless you happen to be Joanna Lumley making a television programme that is) and many people leave disappointed.
“Always travel in hope, rather than expectation, of seeing the Northern Lights. For the best chances of seeing the lights, head north – but not too far. ” Alistair McLean, Founder of The Aurora Zone.
“No waterfall in Europe can match Gullfoss. In wildness and fury it outdoes the Niagra Falls in the United States” From the Travel Diary of two Danes in the retinue of Frederick VII of Denmark (1907).
The falls are where the wide Hvítá river, swollen with melt waters from the nearby glacier rush southward and about a kilometre above the falls turns sharply to the left and flows down into a wide curved three step staircase before abruptly plunging in two stages into a crevice thirty-two metres deep with a thunderous roar and unstoppable force.
The river is wild and untamed dashing madly over rocks and advancing like a cavalry charge racing to the precipice and the final crevice which is about twenty metres wide, and is at right angles to the flow of the river which results in a dramatic water plunge and an atmosphere full of hanging mist which leaves no one in any doubt about the wonderful power of nature.
The original great Geyser erupts only infrequently now so you could be a long time hanging around waiting for a show. Apparently people used to encourage it to blow by pouring soap powder into the borehole as this was a generally reliable way of encouraging it to perform but eventually this stopped working because the residue of the soap clogged up the underground vents and geologists now believe that it requires a dramatic event such as an earthquake to set it off again.
Luckily the nearby geyser Strokkur erupts much more regularly every five minutes or so to heights of up to twenty metres (that’s the equivalent of about five London double decker buses). Crowds of people gather expectantly around the glassy pool waiting for the translucent blue water bubble to foam and then dramatically break through the surface forcing many gallons of boiling water and hissing steam into the air.
This is the site of the historic Icelandic National Assembly. This was called the Althing and was an open-air assembly that represented the whole of Iceland that was established in the year 930 and continued to meet for eight hundred and fifty years or so after that.
This history and the powerful natural setting of the assembly grounds has given the site iconic status as a national shrine and on 17th June 1944 thousands of Icelanders flocked to this place for the historic foundation of the modern independent republic of Iceland.
This is also a place where the land is literally tearing itself apart in a sort of messy divorce settlement as the tectonic plates of Europe and America meet and are in continual conflict with each other as they are drifting slowly apart at a rate of 3mm per year, which may not sound a lot but in geological terms is almost as fast as Usain Bolt!
Finally – Take a Swim in the Blue Lagoon
This place is horribly commercialised and wickedly expensive but having travelled all this way it is stubbornly on most people’s ‘to do’ list.
The Blue Lagoon geothermal spa is one of the most visited attractions in Iceland. The steamy waters are part of a landscape constructed by lava formation with warm waters that are rich in minerals like silica and sulphur and are used as a skin exfoliant. The water temperature in the bathing and swimming area of the lagoon averages a very comfortable 40° centigrade all year round.
If anyone is put off by the absurd €40 basic admission price (a premium spa and treatments package costs a wallet busting €430) there are a number of alternative geothermal heated pools in Reykjavik without the marketing hype for only a fraction of the price (but also without the location).
So, that is my top ten Iceland suggestions. There are other things to do of course like whale watching, pony trekking, hiking and land rover safaris to the glaciers but I haven’t done any of those. Yet!
Sue also suggested a list of things not to do in Iceland and I can only think of one – Don’t get too close to an active volcano especially if you haven’t taken out the additional volcano damage insurance on the hire car!
Posted in Cathedrals, Europe, History, Iceland, Natural Environment, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Þingvellir National Park, Blue Lagoon Iceland, Car Insurance, Eyjafjallajokull, Golden Circle, Gulfoss Falls, Hallgrímskirkja, Huldufólk, Leif Eiriksson, Northern Lights, Penis Museum, Reykjavik, Sólfar Suncraft, Stokkur Geysir Iceland, Vikings
It’s nice to feel useful (5) …
Every so often I like to take a look at the search engine terms that may or may not have directed people towards some of my posts. Some of them are just so funny and so here are ten more recent ones:
“Joan of Arc getting burned at the stake clean images”. Now, I guess that burning at the stake would have been a fairly messy business with all of that smoke and ash and burning embers rising up into the sky, not to mention the spitting fat as the flesh melted in the flames so I imagine that even if there were cameras in medieval France that the chances of getting a ‘clean’ image would have been rather difficult.
I wrote a post about Joan of Arc so perhaps that is where the enquirer was directed?
Next, I have three searches about bridges. The first one is just too specific for me to be able to help but I did write a post about this bridge after a visit to Mostar in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2008 – “how much space is between the beams on the stari most bridge?”. Second, this one from an enquirer whose stupidity is just immense – “what is a bridge?” and finally this one which is almost equally as dumb – “why was the Humber bridge being built?” – doh! Why did the chicken cross the road?
Actually the 2,220 metre Humber Suspension Bridge is the fifth largest of its type in the World. This is a very big bridge indeed but the statistic used to be even more impressive because when it was first opened in 1981 it was the longest single-span suspension bridge in the World, a record that it held for the next sixteen years.
Leading on from the Humber Bridge my next favourite is – “Anne Frank connection with hull?” because as far as I can make out there is none other than the Hull to Rotterdam P&O ferry.
I have posted a few times about travelling in Italy and the inevitability of a statue of the Italian hero of unification Giuseppe Garibaldi and although everyone knows that he has a biscuit named after him I was surprised to come across this search term – “which Italian town has a biscuit named after it?” Maybe the enquirer turned up at my post about Garbaldi when they were really looking for Genoese cake?
Sex almost always rears its ugly head of course and “large Norwegian penis in a jar” is my offering in this collection of search out-takes. I am not an expert on Norwegian penises, large or small, but I did visit the Penis Museum in Reykjavik and this is probably close enough to have recorded the visit to the blog.
This next search may or may not have anything to do with sex, I’ll leave readers to reach their own conclusions – “car park in Ciudad Rodrigo”. I have visited and stayed in Ciudad Rodrigo but I give you my word that I absolutely did not hang around in town centre car parks!
For this selection of search terms I have save my favourite until last and this is it – “things to do in Tossa de Marr Spain for clairvoyants”. Now, call me a sceptic if you like but if you can see into the future what on earth does a clairvoyant need with a website of advertised events – why don’t they just look in their crystal ball?
I have been to Tossa de Mar and I have to say that palm reader, soothsayer or clairvoyant that it is a very fine place to visit.
Posted in Croatia, Europe, France, Greece, History, Iceland, Italy, Literature, Norway, Spain, Travel, Vikings, World Heritage
Tagged Anne Frank, Bosnia Herzegovina, Ciudad Rodrigo, Clairvoyants, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Humber Bridge, Joan of Arc, Mostar, Penis Museum, Reyjkavik, Tossa de Mar
It’s nice to feel useful (4) …
Every now and again I start to look back over my posts to review what has been going on. One of the things that I like to do is to take a look at the search questions that seem to bring web-surfers by the site and take a look at some of the more bizarre and unusual.
All of my reports in this post are about travel related questions. Firstly this one – “Ferry Crossing Hull to Amsterdam Horror Stories”. I am not sure what the enquirer had in mind here, perhaps it was the story of the woman who threw herself overboard or perhaps the suicide statistics on the nearby Humber Bridge, maybe it was the on board catering arrangements which, actually, I have to say were excellent! Either way here is the post that I wrote about the otherwise brilliant ferry crossing – Hull to Rotterdam.
Second in this category is “is there mountain driving throughout Spain?” What a dumb question – with an average altitude of six hundred and fifty metres it is second highest country in Europe after Switzerland so of course there is mountain driving and to be honest most people could work this out by consulting a geographical atlas.
To be honest however I have to admit to having been caught out by this myself and on a recent visit to Catalonia I was forced to abandon a drive to Andorra because the mountain drive was just too difficult – An aborted drive to Andorra.
Next in this section – “How long is Ryanair airplane seat belts?” and quite frankly how the heck should I know and do I really care. I first wrote on the subject of Ryanair in 2009 and it immediately started getting hundreds of hits and then in 2011 it just stopped completely. I reviewed and reposted it and changed the title from the specific ‘Travel Tips when Flying Ryanair’ to the more general title that it has now and hey presto the hits started coming again. – Travel Tips when Flying Budget Airlines.
Next, I like this one – “Lawrence and Gerald Durrell – how tall were they?, honestly, what sort of question is that and unless you were their tailor or their undertaker why would you want to know. I did write a post about the Durrells when I visited Corfu where they both lived so perhaps this is where the enquirer ended up – “Corfu, In the Footsteps of Lawrence and Gerald Durrell” and I will be returning later this year so hopefully I can provide more missing detail!
How about this one – “How long would it take me from Sagrada Familia from England? Without further information that is a tough one because unless you have discovered time travel which is very unlikely then the options seem to me to be restricted to road, train or airline. The motorway option will take a couple of days if you test the motorway speed limits to the maximum and the train option is probably more or less the same but a flight from London Stansted will see you in Barcelona, or nearby Girona (Ryanair) in under two hours.
I flew to Girona recently and this is my post about Gaudi’s unfinished Cathedral – The Sagrada Familia.
Finally in this section I have found a question about Morocco – “Buying a rain jacket in Fes” which just makes the mind boggle. You can pretty much anything in Fes but it doesn’t generally rain a lot in Morocco, except when we went to the Majorelle Gardens in Marrakech so when I was there rain wear was not very prominent and we had to make do with a travel umbrella – The Souks of Fes.
Moving on from travel I have found a couple of health related queries. I am not a doctor or a dietician but I think I know the answer to the first one – “is edam good for your liver?” and my response, unless there is medical research to the contrary, is probably not. I did write a post about a visit to a Dutch cheese factory so perhaps this is where the enquirer was directed – Heritage visits and Museums.
And then this one – “Banana Death”
I confess that I have never been a great fan of bananas but except for the time when my dad and I fell out one tea time because I refused to eat one in a sandwich I have never really considered them to be especially dangerous.
My dad loved bananas and it is an interesting fact that they are now the most popular fruit in the UK with Britons eating an average of between 25 and 30lbs of fruit each year; more than double the amount consumed 15 years ago. Annual UK sales are at a record £750m, representing more than a quarter of all fruit sales. I wrote about bananas once here – Banana Sandwiches or Chip Butties?
Finally to sex because it is estimated that well over half of all web searches are about this subject.
Firstly “Places to get laid in Europe” and believe me if I had the answer to that one then I would keep it to myself. Perhaps the enquirer was thinking about the red light district in Amsterdam or perhaps they found their way to my post on the Grand Tour of Europe?
But I have saved my absolute favourite for this collection util the very last and this is it:
“Did Vikings have large penises?”
Well, I am not an archaeologist or an anthropologist but what sort of odd question is that to put into a web search engine?
I find myself being completely unable to help with this subject but on a recent visit to Iceland I did get to visit the rather odd Penis Museum but I don’t think that will have the answer to that one either.
.
Posted in Arts and Crafts, Europe, History, Literature, Marrakech, Morocco, Natural Environment, Spain, World Heritage
Tagged Bananas, d blog visitors, Fes Morocco, Gerald Durell, Google, Lawrence Durrell, Life, Penis Museum, Reyjkavik, Sagrada Familia, Search Engine, Search Engine Terms, Statistics, Viking Penis, Wordpress
Posted in Arts and Crafts, Europe, Food, History, Hotels, Iceland, island hopping, Literature, Natural Environment, Travel, World Heritage
Tagged Culture, Life, Minnesota Vikings, Penis Museum, Photography, Reykjavik, Vikings
“…collecting penises is like collecting anything. You can never stop, you can never catch up, you can always get a new one, a better one a bigger size or better shape…” Museum owner, Sigurður Hjartarson
In the hotel lobby there was a selection of attractions leaflets and one was advertising a rather odd museum so we thought we might take a look. It wasn’t hard to find and and immediately grabbed our attention and it seemed just too bizarre to miss so we approached the door, turned the knob and went inside.
The Icelandic Phallological Museum contains a collection of more than two hundred and fifteen penises and adjacent body parts from almost all of the land and sea mammals in Iceland including fifty six specimens belonging to seventeen different kinds of whale and thirty-six belonging to seven different kinds of seal and walrus. In addition it has a collection of non-Icelandic specimens including a giraffe, an elephant and a polar bear!
It was getting close to closing time and there were only a few visitors inside hanging around the exhibition cases. Two young girls were constantly giggling and not taking it at all seriously, there was a man with a limp, an elderly couple looked thoroughly bemused by it all and half a dozen people from a tour group were wandering around rather self-consciously. For my part I had not seen so many male reproductive organs since I inadvertently strayed onto a naturist beach on the Spanish island of Fuerteventura!
The exhibits ranged from some of the largest to some of the smallest in the animal kingdom. The largest is a portion of a blue whale’s penis measuring one hundred and seventy centimetres long and weighing seventy kilograms but is in fact only the end bit as the entire organ which in its full glory would have been about five metres long would take up most of the room in the small museum! At the other end of the scale the penis of a hamster at only two millimetres is the smallest item in the collection and needs a magnifying glass to see it.
The section I liked best was the amusing “folklore section” exhibiting mythological penises with specimens allegedly taken from elves, trolls and kelpies. The Elf penis is supposed to be of impressive proportions but you can’t see it of course because in Icelandic folklore elves and trolls are invisible so it sits mockingly in an empty glass jar. It’s a good joke!
This by the way is an Icelandic Elf…
For many years, the museum apparently tried to get a human penis but was only able to obtain testicles and a foreskin from two separate donors and only recently has it acquired the full article. I’m afraid that I don’t have any more details on exactly why this particular task is so difficult to accomplish. The Icelandic donor was a ninety-five year-old man who was said to have been a bit of a gigolo in his youth and wanted to donate his penis to the museum to ensure his “eternal fame”.
As he got older he apparently began to worry that his penis was shrinking and he became concerned that his pickled prize would not do him full justice and remember him at his best as it were (a bit like each new Cliff Richard album). He was right to be concerned because after he died in 2011 his penis was surgically removed so that it could be added to the museum’s collection but the procedure was not entirely successful and the contents of the jar were completely unrecognisable (see picture above).
The Icelandic Phallological Museum claims that it exists for the purpose of genuinely serious study into the field of phallology in an organized, scientific fashion but you might not be inclined to agree with that when reaching the end of the tour and ending up in the inevitable souvenir shop where rather tasteless and inappropriate items for sale included key rings and bottle openers each moulded in the shape of a penis that were drawing more uncontrolled laughter from the two young girls.
I don’t regularly buy souvenirs but if I was going to buy a mug from Reykjavik I think I would be more inclined to go for one with a picture of the Sólfar Suncraft or Leif Ericson in preference to one with an image of a male private part.
So we left the museum that I am confident to declare the oddest in the World, even more bizarre (although I haven’t been there) than the Kansas Barbed Wire Museum in the USA, the Dog Collar Museum in the UK or the Toilet Museum in New Delhi, India. In Amsterdam there is a Museum of Handbags and Purses! If anyone has any alternative suggestions by-the-way then I am happy to consider them for inclusion in this list!
Near to the museum there was a small supermarket and when in a foreign country I always like to drop in and see what unusual items I can find on the shelves. Disappointingly on this occasion everything seemed to be rather familiar with a range of items that I might expect to find in any UK supermarket including rather oddly a freezer cabinet full of Iceland (the UK supermarket Iceland) frozen pizzas.
Eventually we came across the chilled section and here were the sort of items that I was hoping to find and which soon had me giggling like the two girls in the penis museum. Here were some frighteningly unappetising sounding salad spreads with names that sounded as though they should be more appropriately being exhibited next door and if you have ever wondered why sometimes products change their name to be more universally acceptable then here is an example why…
We might have stayed longer but our plan was to walk into the city for evening meal but as we left the museum Kim spotted somewhere close by and once again demonstrated her uncanny knack of finding a good restaurant and on the edge of town her instinct led us to a small bistro with a short menu called ‘Harry’s Bar’ and we were glad of that because we really feelt like walking any more today and the food turned out to be just wonderful and hopefully not served up from these tins of processed meat.
Have Bag, Will Travel 