The Icelandic Phallological Museum (Icelandic: Hið Íslenzka Reðasafn) in Húsavík, Iceland houses the world's largest collection of penises and penile parts.[1] By July 2011, it had 276 penises taken from 46 species, including Homo sapiens. Its collection includes 55 penises taken from whales, 36 from seals and 118 from land mammals,[2] including a wide variety of domestic, wild, terrestrial, and marine animals[3] and an unfortunate stray polar bear shot by fishermen who found it drifting on pack ice off the Westfjords.[4] The museum acquired its first human penis in July 2011.[5]
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The museum was founded by Sigurður Hjartarson, a historian who worked as a teacher and principal for 37 years, latterly at Reykjavík's Hamrahlíd College, where he taught history and Spanish.[6] As a child, he owned a bull's penis (or pizzle) which was used as a cattle whip. He began collecting penises after a friend heard the story of the bull's penis he owned as a child and gave him four new ones, three of which Hjartarson gave to friends. Acquaintances at whaling stations began bringing him whale penises as well, and the collection grew from there, expanding through donations and acquisitions from various sources around Iceland. The organs of farm animals came from abattoirs, while fishermen supplied those of seals and the smaller whales. The penises of larger whales came from commercial whaling stations, although this source dried up after the International Whaling Commission implemented a global ban on commercial whaling in 1986. However, Hjartarson has been able to continue to collect whale penises by harvesting them from the 12–16 whales that fall victim to stranding on the Icelandic coast each year.[7]
In 1997, Hjartarson opened the Phallological Museum in Reykjavík to put his penises on public display for the first time. By 2003, it was attracting 5,200 visitors a year, of which 4,200 were from abroad. He put the museum up for sale in 2003, and offered it to the city of Reykjavík as a gift.[8] However, he was unsuccessful in obtaining financial support from the state or city and when he retired in 2004, and therefore could no longer afford the rent on the museum's premises.[9]
After his retirement, he moved along with his collection to Húsavík, a fishing village with a population of about 2,200 people, some 298 miles (480 km) northeast of the capital. The museum is currently housed in a small building, formerly a restaurant,[9] that is marked with a giant wooden penis and a stone phallus standing outside on the street. The inhabitants were said to be skeptical at first, "but when people realised there was nothing pornographic here, they came to accept it."[5] According to Hjartarson, "Collecting penises is like collecting anything. You can never stop, you can never catch up, you can always get a new one, a better one."[10]
Beginning in 2012, the museum will be under new management, when Hjartarson hands it over to his son, Hjörtur Gísli Sigurðsson. It is intended that the collection will be moved back to Reykjavík, where it will be more accessible. The new location is : Laugavegur 116 Reykjavik.[11]
The collection ranges from some of the largest to some of the smallest penises in the animal world. Its largest exhibit is a portion of a blue whale's penis measuring 170 centimetres (67 in) long and weighing 70 kilograms (150 lb); the specimen is apparently "just the front tip", as the entire organ, when intact, would have been about 5 metres (16 ft) long and weighed about 350 kilograms (770 lb)–450 kilograms (990 lb). The penis bone of a hamster, only 2 millimetres (0.079 in) long, is the smallest item in the collection and requires the use of a magnifying glass to view it.[12]
The museum also has a "folklore section" exhibiting mythological penises; its online catalogue lists specimens taken from elves, trolls, kelpies, and "The Nasty Ghost of Snaefell".[13] As Icelandic elves and trolls are invisible, so too are their penises.[9]
The museum's website states that it enables "individuals to undertake serious study into the field of phallology in an organized, scientific fashion." It aims to collect penis specimens from every mammal in Iceland. The museum also exhibits phallic artwork and penis-related objects such as lampshades made from the scrotums of bulls.[1] Most of the collection has been donated by benefactors (the only purchase to date has been an elephant's penis measuring nearly 1 metre (3.3 ft) long) and are either preserved in formaldehyde and exhibited in jars or dried and hung around the walls of the museum.[12]
Hjartarson has used a variety of techniques to preserve his penises, including preservation in formaldehyde, pickling, drying, stuffing and salting.[3] One particularly large penis has been converted into a walking stick.[10] Many of the museum's exhibits are illuminated by lamps made by Hjartarson from rams' testicles.[3] Hjartarson has also created wooden phallus carvings, which can be found adorning various objects around the museum,[5] and has a bow tie decorated with phalluses that he wears on special occasions.[9]
Josh Schonwald of Salon.com described his impressions of the museum when he visited in 1998:
They were hanging on the walls, stuffed in jars, displayed with curatorial love – dried penises, penises embalmed in formaldehyde, massive penises displayed like hunting trophies. A tanned bull's penis, a smoked horse's penis. There were runty, shriveled penises of reindeer, foxes, minks and rats. There were seal and walrus penises with stiff penis bones – ensuring a perpetually erect state. There was the Big Penis – a 3-foot-long blue whale penis (which could have been an oar for a canoe).[7]
The museum is open between May and September, and attracts up to 11,000 visitors annually,[5] sixty percent of whom are women.[12] It has attracted widespread international attention from the media around the world, most recently as the result of the donation of a human penis to the collection.[14]
For many years, the museum did not have any human penises, although in 2008, Iceland's national handball team donated fifteen casts of their penises, now displayed in a cabinet in the museum.[5] Hjartarson was also able to obtain testicles and a foreskin from two separate donors.[15] The foreskin was donated by Iceland's National Hospital after an emergency circumcision operation.[4] Four men – an Icelander, a German, an American and a Briton – pledged to donate their penises to the museum after their deaths. The American sent a cast of his penis, which he called "Elmo", to serve as a substitute in the meantime.[12] According to Hjartarson, the American donor "is a bit crazy. He wanted to have his penis cut off even during his lifetime and then visit the museum."[9]
The Icelandic donor, though, was to have first priority, as the museum's mission is to display the organs of Icelandic mammals. The act of removing it, however, was not easy, as Hjartarson explained: "The donor and the doctors are in agreement, it must be taken while the body is warm. Then bleed it and pump it up. If it cools you can't do anything, so [the donor] is eager to have it taken warm and treated to be preserved with dignity."[3] The donor was a 95-year-old Icelander from nearby Akureyri who was said to have been a womaniser in his youth and wanted to donate his penis to the museum to ensure his "eternal fame".[12] Hjartarson said that, even at the age of 95, the donor remained active, "both vertically and horizontally."[7]
In January 2011, the donor died and his penis was duly removed. Unfortunately, the operation was not entirely successful and left the penis "a greyish-brown, shrivelled mass." According to Hjartarson, "I should have stretched it and sewn it at the back to keep it in more or less a normal position." Instead, it "went directly into the formaldehyde." Although he was disappointed at the results, he expressed confidence that "I will get a younger and a bigger and better one soon."[5]