When I asked Vice if they’d give me some money to hire a car so I could drive nine hours north of Reykjavik to meet a man living in a fishing hamlet near the tip of the Arctic Circle who keeps the largest collection of preserved penises in the world, they frowned. Apparently they’re not a chauffeur service here to provide Icelandic dick tours. But I knew the true value of a room full of pickled schlongs to the curious and worldly Vice reader, so I decided to hitchhike. It was worth it if only for the fact I now know what happens when a whale gets a boner.
There’s only one straight road going all the way up from Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik to the coastal village of Husavik. It took a day and a half of thumbing rides to make it. Along the road we were picked up by a metal drummer who was making one last road trip to see his family before going on tour around Eastern Europe and Scandinavia, a fisherman from the desolate east who spoke perfect English (which he used to express strong views on what joining the EU would do to Iceland’s fishing policy), a chaotic artist in a truck full of canvases with her two young sons in tow, and a guy who made us repeatedly apologize for the British government using anti-terrorist legislation against Iceland. Literally everyone in Iceland is interesting.
Few more so than Sigurdur Hjartarson, aka The Penis Man. He opened up his collection of bell-poles, wangs, longfellows, and dinks in Husavik in 2004 after retiring as a teacher in Reykjavik, where he once taught my friend history. She diplomatically remembers him as being “a very nice man.”
Full story: THE WORLD’S BIGGEST COLLECTION OF PICKLED DICKS – Viceland Today