WF in Switzerland

During my studies to become a veterinarian, as an Icelandic horse owner and successful sport rider, he was able to awaken my interest in Icelandic horse breeding. Under his presidency, I was able to gain my first experience as a member of the Breeding Commission. As a result of a sudden vacancy, I was elected provisional chair of the Breeding Commission in 1983. This interim solution lasted until 2017. To continue the breeding work in the spirit of Ewald and to be open for new things was one of my great concerns over the many years.

An example of this is the following, initially rather utopian undertaking. I had frequent family and professional contact with Ewald, who was by then a veterinarian at Zurich Zoo and also my brother-in-law. From him I learned about the new method of identifying animals by marking them with a microchip. At that time, this method was used in the USA, especially for cattle, and more recently for the animals at Zurich Zoo. We were fascinated by the idea that this type of marking could also be used on Icelandic horses. Together we were able to convince the board of IPV CH of this innovative idea.

WorldFengur, how it all began

In the 90’s digitalisation gained more and more importance also in the studbook of Icelandic horses. It soon became clear to me that the studbook of the IPV CH would also have to be converted to this system. But how, because for the small number of Icelandic horses born in Switzerland, going it alone was not a sensible way. Through my sister Marietta, who lives in Iceland, I learned that in Iceland they were using a digital studbook called Fengur for studbook work. 

All horses in Iceland that had been assessed for breeding were entered in this database. It quickly became clear to me that only an affiliation with Fengur would make sense for Switzerland. A merger with other countries that were also pushing digitalisation was out of the question for us for various reasons. Jón Baldur Lorange, the main person responsible for Fengur, was understandably not very interested in my enquiry. He was of the opinion that the studbook of IPV CH was a problem we had to solve.

So I asked IT specialists and Icelandic horse studbooks in neighbouring countries again whether a cooperation would be possible. Unfortunately, the result was unsatisfactory and therefore the only option was to contact Jón Baldur again.

My request to him was now more concrete. The Swiss breeding horses should be registered separately in Fengur. My argument was that the very small Swiss stud book only made sense in connection with the stud book of the mother country. Perhaps other countries, especially smaller ones, would be interested in joining the Icelandic stud book.

At the beginning I had the feeling that my wish met with little interest and after several inquiries, my hope that a cooperation might be possible faded.

Sequential numbering was also necessary for the personal ID and the origin of the horses (farm names). To make it a little clearer, the first digit of the postcode of the current place of residence or breeding farm was added after the CH.

The registration of horses born in the country was a very time-consuming task. Just as in many other countries, a large proportion of the horses born in Switzerland were descended from horses that had not been bred in Iceland. The rule was that horses born outside Iceland could only be registered in WF if the ancestors born in Iceland had been registered before. Fortunately, in most of my cases this only applied to horses from Iceland, which made everything a bit easier.

A great help for me and certainly for many others was Hallveig, the chief registrar of Iceland. It was great to work with her, she was always friendly, reliable and helpful. I am very sad that she had to leave us so early. Thank you for everything Hallveig, I will always remember you fondly.

A great relief during the registration was that the studbook office in Switzerland had archived copies of the parents of the CH foals from the beginning. This made it relatively easy to find and register the horses in Iceland. From the year 1975 until the end of my term of office, all horses born in Switzerland were registered by , with the older ones I limited myself to those relevant for breeding.

Thank you

I would like to thank everyone who supported me during my time as Breeding Director of IPV CH. A very big thank you goes to my husband and my children, who had a lot of understanding for the many hours and days I spent as Breeding Director of IPV CH and as Registrar.
Another big thank you goes to Jón Baldur and his crew who created a great and informative database. The World Stud Book for Icelandic horses is a great database. To the best of my knowledge, there is no database for any breed of horse comparable to WorldFengur.

Through the worldwide networking via WorldFengur and the long-standing cooperation with FEIF, it has been possible to harmonise all activities concerning breeding evaluation, breeding objective and international sport tests. The performance of horses in all countries is thus comparable. Probably the most important consequence of the equal assessment in Iceland and all other countries is that the Icelandic horses have developed in the same way all over the world, this with the variance usual in the breed. This means that there is no danger of the Icelandic horse breed splitting up into individual, clearly differing subgroups, as is known from other horse breeds.

I would like to make special mention of my sister Marietta, who drew my attention to the Fengur database which led to the contact with Jón Baldur. By chance, Marietta and her husband Pétur Behrens were invited by the Icelandic breeding consultant Ágúst Sigurðsson at that time. Among other things, they talked about the still nameless worldwide database that was in the process of being created. It should be given a catchy name. Marietta’s suggestion was very unspectacular, but it met with approval. The word “World” should simply be added to the existing name of the old Icelandic studbook. WorldFengur was completed by a very catchy logo, impressive in its simplicity, drawn by the Icelandic painter and horseman Petúr Behrens.
The events described above are some of my personal memories of an intense and exciting time as Breeding Director of the Swiss Icelandic Horse Association.