LensCulture Editor Review

This series came out of a chance encounter with the horses of Iceland, small hardy beasts that can live out in all weathers including arctic conditions and can trace their lineage back to the Vikings. My MA project at UCAS in England concerns the ecological relationship between people and landscape. I am looking at processes of adaptation, at how both land and people show evidence of their relationship and also the social construction of space, focussing on privately-owned woodlots in what was once ancient woodland in southern England. I hope in the work to draw attention to how owners give land an identity and how their own identity is influenced by this relationship. During a week's break from studying on a trip to Iceland and hoping to see northern lights, I took a drive out into the hills, parked up and waited. The lights did not appear but the Icelandic horses did, surrounding my car. There was something truly heroic about them in the bleak landscape, manes blowing wildly in the freezing wind. They seemed to sum up everything about adaptation to a natural environment and the idea of identity formation that I was wrestling with in my main project. These Viking Horses became a project on their own.