Réttir

So for my first trip out of Reykjavik I had the opportunity to participate in an Icelandic tradition: Réttir, or the annual sheep round-up. Farmers all over Iceland go into the mountains where the sheep have been grazing for the summer and herd them back to their farms for the winter, and in order to separate which sheep belong to which farmers, they bring them first to these gigantic stone circles for sorting.

In Iceland, it is tough for farmers to make a living on farming alone, which is evidenced by the interesting characters you see at these round-ups. For example, we saw several people wandering around with a cigarette in one hand, a beer in another, and a sheep between their legs! 

There is a central circle where a portion of the sheep are kept while the farmer's families go around checking tags and marking to see which are theirs. Spectators stand on the walls, or sometimes get down and dirty as well!

It's chaos. At one point, one of the sheep jumped over the fence the farmers use to get in and out of the inner circle and proceeded to jump over the stone walls on the outside into one of the pens! 

It was a really fun experience, and supposedly the farmers really ham it up sometimes and sing some of the old songs for the tourists. That didn't happen this time, but I highly recommend attending if you're in Iceland in September!!