The Icelandic Phallogical Museum

On the final day of our December holiday trip to Iceland, we took a taxi cab ride to a very unusual museum in Reykjavik.

After we climbed into the back seat, I said to my husband, Peter, “You have the address, right?”

“Well, no…we’re going to the phallo…phallo…logic museum?” he said, looking at me uncertainly.

Even though Peter is not a native English speaker, the word is not an easy one for anyone to say.

“The Phallological Museum,” I said with some hesitancy.

I’d already posted on social media before going on our trip that I was thinking about visiting the museum. Of course, it was initially said as a joke. And many comments and a laughing emoji or two agreed with the sentiment.

The taxi driver looked at us through the rearview mirror. “Oh, say it for what it is! Don’t be a prude!”

“The Penis Museum!” I shouted with a laugh. I was determined to break that stereotypical picture of the American tourist afraid of all things sex and nudity-related.

“Take us to the place with all the dicks!” Peter added in his typical European style.

“Yes, now I understand,” the driver said, also laughing.

So, we ended up at The Icelandic Phallological Museum (or Penis Museum), a unique collection of phallic specimens belonging to all the various types of mammals found in Iceland. The founder, Sigurður Hjartarson, worked in the education field for over sixty years. In his early thirties, he was given a pizzle or bull’s penis as a joke. Soon after, others began bringing him more specimens. This led to his strange hobby which was the foundation of the museum.

“At that time in 1974 I was living in the town of Akranes on the southwest coast, working as the headmaster in a secondary school. Some of my teachers used to work in summer in a nearby whaling station and after the first specimen, they started bringing me whale penises, supposedly to tease me. Then the idea came up gradually that it might be interesting collecting specimens from more mammalian species.” Founder, Sigurður Hjartarson

The collection gradually grew in number of specimens. And in 2011, the founder’s son, Hjörtur Gísli Sigurðsson, took over as curator and took the collection to a new level in the modern building we were visiting in downtown Reykjavik.

Walking into the museum, we were greeted with various works of art and recorded information that directed us down an escalator. Before purchasing our tickets, we giggled our way through the gift shop filled with novelty items such as penis-shaped stuffies dressed in Viking costume, t-shirts, and basically anything that can be made into penile form, from bottle openers to lollipops.

After purchasing our tickets, we were told that you could take any drinks purchased at the bar and café through the museum. Normally, we would have grabbed that opportunity, but we had only just had breakfast at the hotel. I still took note of the beers on tap from Moby Dick Pale Ale and Phallic Pilsner and coffees served with a penis sculpted into the foam.

There is even a Christmas tree to enjoy while you dine. As we later departed, I spied some food items being served, and they looked absolutely delicious. Penis waffles, anyone?

The museum, although small, ended up being one of the most unique and interesting surprises of our visit to Iceland. The beginning highlights some of the curator’s personal items, such as a penis-shaped phone, and accessories made from male mammal anatomy including bowties and Doc Holliday’s bull-penis cane. There is even a preserved human donation on display next to letters from many others that promise to donate when the time comes.

Some of my favorite exhibitions were in the mythology section. Here was information on the anatomy of such creatures as the merman, the unicorn, and the troll. The troll’s specimen on display, complete with genital warts, will send shivers of disgust down even the most hardened visitor (pun not intended).

As we perused the rest of the small yet knowledge-dense space, we found it contains a collection of more than two hundred penises and penile parts belonging to almost all the Icelandic land and sea mammals and about fifty from other places around the world. Near each is an educational placard describing class, diet, mating pattern, courting habits, virility/mating frequency, mating habits, main phallus features, phallus size, and testicle size. But, like most others I suspect, the most interesting tidbits of information are found in the oddities section.

The largest specimen is from a sperm whale. Although it’s nearly six feet tall and one hundred and fifty pounds, it is only the tip. It was originally about seventeen feet long and approximately seven hundred pounds.

Here are my favorite takeaways from our visit.

1. The brown rat achieves multiple orgasms. What a lucky rodent!

2. The pig, with its spiral-shaped penis, has the longest orgasms. They last up to fifteen minutes! That doesn’t sound like a boar at all.

3. The Killer Whale likes to eat shark balls. Yes, shark balls!

4. The Bottlenose Dolphin, a creature that has sex for pleasure, may try to copulate with a human. And those innocent-looking creatures masturbate using wriggling eels around their members. Shocking, Flipper! Absolutely shocking!

Our visit was informative, educational, and above all, entertaining. If you do not plan on eating, the entire visit can be finished in less than an hour. It is definitely worth it– where else will you ever have another opportunity like this?

And to the taxi driver, would an American “prude” write this?

For more information, please visit the museum website: https://phallus.is/en/