A Good Horse Has No Color: Searching Iceland for the Perfect Horse

A good horse can make its rider "king for a while," according to Icelandic poetry. But finding a good horse requires a keen and practiced eye. One must see beyond the obvious attributes--appearance, color, and size--to discern a horse's true personality and temperament. Nancy Marie Brown puts her eye to the test when she travels to Iceland to find the perfect Icelandic horse she can bring home to her Pennsylvania farm and make her own.She arrives in Iceland shaken by tragedy, uncertain of the language, lacking confidence in her riding skills; but she's determined to make her search a success. She finds inspiration in the country's austere and majestic landscape, which is alive with the ghosts of an adventure-filled past. In the glacier-carved hinterland, she rides a variety of Icelandic horses--some spirited, willful, even heroic; others docile, trusting, or tame. She also meets an assortment of horse owners, who can be as independent as the animals they breed.Evocative, clear-headed, and richly described, this book is for anyone who has at some time in their life searched for something perfect.

Nancy Marie Brown is the author of "Song of the Vikings: Snorri and the Making of Norse Myths" (Palgrave Macmillan 2012) and "The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman" (Harcourt 2007), among other books of history and nonfiction for the general reader. She lives in Vermont with the writer Charles Fergus, their four Icelandic horses and an Icelandic sheepdog. "A Good Horse Has No Color" was her first book.