The Phallic Museum
The Icelandic Phallological Museum is probably the only museum in the world to contain a collection of phallic specimens belonging to all the various types of mammal found in a single country.
Phallology is an ancient science which, until recent years, has received very little attention in Iceland, except as a borderline field of study in other academic disciplines such as history, art, psychology, literature and other artistic fields like music and ballet.
Now, thanks to The Icelandic Phallological Museum, it is finally possible for individuals to undertake serious study into the field of phallology in an organized, scientific fashion.
The Icelandic Phallological Museum contains a collection of more than two hundred penises and penile parts belonging to almost all the land and sea mammals that can be found in Iceland.
Some of the founders teachers used to work in the summer in a nearby whaling station and after the first specimen they started bringing him whale penises, supposedly to tease him. Then the idea came up gradually that it might be interesting collecting specimens from more mammalian species.
Collecting these organs progressed slowly in the beginning and in 1980 he had 13 specimens, four from whales and nine from land mammals. In 1990 there were 34 specimens and when the museum opened in Reykjavík in August 1997 the specimens were 62 in number.
In the spring of 2004 the museum moved to the small fishing village of Húsavík, the whale watching capital of Europe. It was moved back to Reykjavik in the autumn of 2011 and opened there under the direction of a new curator.
The reaction of the visitors has been very favorable. Over one hundred articles about the museum have been published in 26 countries all over the world. The number of visitors has been gradually increasing, being 12.000 in 2011.
