If you receive a ridiculous “I’m Not In The Office” email in the coming days, it may have been sent to you by a horse. You may be thinking how, but this has become a reality thanks to some visionaries at Visit Iceland who decided to launch the “OutHorse Your E-Mail” service.
A survey conducted by Visit Iceland showed that 55 percent of respondents said they check their email at least once a day while on vacation, and nearly 60 percent said they were waiting for a response from their manager even though they were on vacation. That’s why Iceland has decided to offer a unique response service to help you while you’re on vacation.
You’re probably wondering how did they teach the horses to write? A video by Visit Iceland and Inspired By Iceland shows a team trying to build a horse-sized QWERTY keyboard from giant wooden boards in a workshop.
This massive writing platform is then placed outside with an impressive view of Iceland in the background to complement the touch of the typewriters typing the I’m In The Office emails. You can write your own emails via the Visit Iceland website where Litla Stjarna Star from Hvítárholt, Hrímnir from Hvammi and Hekla from Þorkellshó are waiting to assist you.
Litla Stjarna is fast but sleepy, Hrímnir is determined and efficient, perhaps most importantly has shiny hair, while Hekla is friendly and “trained in fashionable corporate vocabulary.”
OutHorse Your Email is not only the best I’m in the Office email you can receive and a great way to advertise the country, it’s also a good opportunity to showcase Iceland’s unique horses. “One of the many things that makes the Icelandic horse so special is how colorful they are,” says a Facebook post by Inspired by Iceland. “With over 40 colors and 100 variations, they truly are one of the most colorful breeds in the entire world!”
The Icelandic horse (Equus ferus caballus) is one of the purest in the world, and its historical relationships with humans have resulted in some unique characteristics among these animals. A 2016 article concluded that an allele (each of the alternate states of a gene that specifies a trait) appeared in medieval England sometime after 850 AD that improved horse gait for equestrianism, and was soon detected in Icelandic horses.
This suggests that Scandinavian settlers who took animals from England to Iceland chose and transported animals with movements that were more comfortable to herd.
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