The Horse in Norway

Abstract

Writers on the origin of the horse and its different breeds have been accustomed to refer to the horses of Norway as though they belonged to a single type. Thus Sanson, in his Zootechnie, includes the horses and ponies of that country in his sub-species Equus caballus hibernicus, to which he also refers the various ponies of the British Isles, the Breton in France, and the horses of Iceland and Sweden. The late Captain Maurice Hayes, in his well-known work on the Points of the Horse, refers collectively to Norwegian and Swedish horses as though they belonged to one natural group. Professor Ewart, in describing a typical representative of what he calls the Forest type, which, as he shows, differs essentially from the newly discovered “Celtic pony,” alludes provisionally to the former as the “Norse horse,” because it is common in Norway.