Sorting horses in a hurricane

After a long party night, the next day at 11 o'clock we continued with sorting the horses. First, the horses from the night paddock were driven directly to the roundabout into a pasture to be driven from there into the large roundabout in groups of 25 to 30 horses. Here, the horses were then sorted. Each owner goes into the middle and separates individual horses, which are then driven through the respective door into their own area. The art here is not to stress the horse too much, to recognize one's own horse, and to have someone at the door who opens the door in time and lets only this horse through. The farmers help each other here, but there are already significant differences in dealing with the horses. There are the stressed ones, the super cool ones, the calm ones, those who are not taken seriously by the horses, and the impatient ones. But somehow they always manage to sort the horses. For the horses that cannot be assigned based on a cold brand or their appearance, the chip is read out with a scanner. Magnus only had 5 horses in the mountains this summer, he separated the horses and I opened the door. Somehow you already felt like you belong and not just as a pure tourist. I was also slightly nervous - but everything went great. The whole procedure took about 3 hours yesterday and during the whole time we had extreme storms with really violent gusts of wind. I underestimated the weather and wanted to get another jacket, so I only had to walk the 400 meters to our farm. However, over the hill and I have definitely never stood in such gusts of wind before. One of the gusts even threw me to the ground and I had trouble getting up again. I was stuck in that stupid spot and couldn't move forward or back. Thank God a car stopped, which recognized my rather precarious situation and asked where I wanted to go. The nice couple then brought me home. Equipped with the new jacket and thicker gloves, we got back in the car and went to the sorting area to sort the remaining horses. Due to the storm, we let our horses stay in our section while others drove their horses home, and it looked really crazy when horse-rider pairs moved diagonally in the gusts of wind. In the late afternoon, the horses were then brought back. You can only do something like this in Iceland. Elias and I drove back to the sorting area in the car, opened the gate, and the horses actually ran in the right direction all by themselves, and we slowly followed behind with the car. The ponies even knew they had to turn onto the mountain paddock. The whole thing took only 5 minutes.... unbelievable. The big ball, as it is called, took place in the evening from 11 o'clock on the other side of the valley. And you can say what you want, Icelanders know how to party. From the first minute to the last, there is only dancing and singing, no one has the famous stick up their... and we were right in the middle until the bitter end :-). It is also worth mentioning that only non-alcoholic drinks are offered there and it is customary for visitors to show up with their own bag full of beer cans. These Icelanders.....