Fleygur

Fleygur, also known as Little Viking Horse, was born on 21 June 1999 in the UK. His parents names were Móna frá Sandhólaferju (mare) and Falur frá Gíslhoti (stallion). Móna is also Svipur’s great-grandmother!

He is black with a crescent moon shaped star and a snip on the end of his nose that looks like a fork of lightening. He is 13.1 hands high, and a stocky built, with a relatively short back and short legs, so he is strong. He is also very ‘forward’ – he doesn’t believe in walking slowly, and although he is very responsive to his rider, he can also get worried about things very quickly so needs a gentle but confident rider.

Fleygur means ‘flying one’.

Fleygur is five gaited, meaning he can tölt and pace, in addition to the usual gaits of walk, trot and canter/gallop. He can perform a fast tölt, though now he is getting older he has started to slow down – a bit!

Fleygur went to live with Gydja when he was a young horse, and became very bonded to her. Sadly, due to a change of circumstances he had to be sold. Because of his sensitive nature, and his strong bond to Gydja he was a challenging ride, and a few people had been to try him before Roger. Fleygur didn’t actually do anything wrong, but he kept trying to go back to Gydja and was shouting the whole time. I must admit that I thought Roger was a bit bonkers when he said he would by him – but Roger was adamant that he was a good horse, and he ‘didn’t buck, bolt or rear,’ despite being clearly upset. We had a difficult first few months with Fleygur, but he did eventually settle down and although he remained tricky to ride at times, and didn’t like to be away from his herd, Roger had years of fun with him. They did quite well in competition – achieving fourth place in the T1 Tölt class at their last show together.

Fleygur is very quick to learn – often only needing to be shown something once, even if it is not him that I am training! This happened when I was asking Svipur to walk over some poles at liberty. Fleygur watched for a while, then butted in and did it himself, waving is nose around at the end to ask for his treat.

He is such a special horse to me – because I find him so engaging, because he inspired my book and because he was Roger’s horse of a lifetime.

I still ride him from time to time, but he is feeling his age now, and so often were just go for walks together, where he can enjoy grazing the herbs on the road side.