Sheep gathering

17 days before I leave.
time is flying.

Decided to make time pass a little faster the last weekend and went to 'göngur' Sheep gathering i think it would be called in english

Left Búðir Wednsday night to go to Neðri Núpur, up north from here to where my moms partner Nilli is from.
8 am Thursday morning we met up with 20 other people and we started going up on the mountains on horses.
Many beers and cognac went into peoples system on the way, and I blame the amazing weather we got.
When we reached up to the cabin on the top of the mountain, 8 hours later, more than 1 seemed to not remember their name anymore ..
By the end,the loose horses run away, I followed with 2 others while the rest of the mend where sitting next to a ditch drinking some more. behind me was a man barely sitting on his horse and holding another on in his right hand. somehow I managed to loose the poor drunk man while I chased after few of the horses. I got all panicky when I reached the cabin. But he was picked up on the way.

One of the man with us told me a sentence I just love. We are sitting there in the grass all of us, each holding a horse or 2. A bottle of cognac is passing between people as well as the traditional nose tobacco .
This is something we have been doing for over 1000 years.
I felt so proud.. Not everyone has the chance to do something their forefathers have been doing for a century.

During the evening at the cabin, everyone had some trout for dinner that had been fished up from the lake up there. Drank beers, whiskey and more cognac, and sang with the harmonikka and guitar.

The following day, most of the people left at 7 am and walked down gathering all the sheeps on the way.
My job in all that is to bring all the horses that the people came up on, back down.
That is the hardest riding challenge I have ever done.
We go on very fast and most of the time on trot down the mountain, the surface is either watery mud or rocks and all the horses go very fast.
I almost had a bad accident on the way down where my horse started loosing his feet in this hill I was going up. Me being so scared of height followed my instinct and jumped off him, then I see after him falling down the hill.
If I handt jumped off so fast, I would have fallen with him.
He came out of it ok though. Strong animals those horses.

The next day is much easier, but then we just need to bring all those sheeps to where they are sorted and each sheep owner gets their sheeps.
I put below some video of my dog. He was so funny trying to be a sheepdog.


Polly