Rettir

This weekend, we got an opportunity to experience Réttir. Réttir is basically a sheep sorting work party here in Iceland. Our AirBnb hosts, Saevar and Louise invited us to follow them up to the event on Saturday morning and we were more than happy to take them up on the offer. We started the day around 8:30am as Saevar wanted to get there early and leave before the place was over run with tourists. We drove north to somewhere near Flúðir and arrived in a line of vehicles all headed to the event.

The location was at the foot of some mountain. We were told that the farmers had spent the previous 10 days rounding up all the sheep on horseback or 4 wheeler. They had tons of sheep enclosed in a large area. It seems that each spring the farmers in Iceland will let their sheep roam over the mountains where ever they want to go and then in the fall, they gather them all up, sort them, and then take care of them for the winter. We have seen sheep roaming everywhere here and I can't fathom they get all them gathered up for winter.

We climbed up on top of 5 to 6 foot stone wall which made up the sorting area and headed toward the inner circle of the structure. The sorting area from the sky would have looked a bit like a wagon wheel with a big center. The center was a large circle and open, but all around the circle were doors that opened into pens. The outer circle were the far walls and the side walls split the circle fairly equally with each section getting a door to the center. There was, of course, one "pen" that had big doors and connected to the large enclosure with all the sheep. Each farmer and crew had claimed a pen and set up shop near the door from the center circle going to their pen.

We arrived about 5 minutes before they let the sheep in. Check out Shelah's video clip of that if you haven't seen it. It was funny watching those sheep flood into the circle and they kept them coming in until it was quite full of sheep in the center. We were told there would be enough sheep to fill the sorting area 3 times. When the doors were close, the people got to work. They starting looking at the tags on the sheep to find their own. Once they found one, they would grab it and drag/pull/ride it off toward their door. They had to work hard to get only their own sheep in their pens as every time they open their door, other sheep tried to get in too.

Before long, there were lots of people down in the sheep pit with the sheep. Many were farmers and friends (actually working) while others were just spectators or tourists with their cameras. Over the next hour, the people started to outnumber the sheep in the center as those working tried to slowly round up the remaining sheep around the spectators. I'm not sure how the farmers felt about all the spectators they had to work around, but no one really seemed upset by it.

I didn't jump out down to the pit to take part as I wasn't dressed for it, but it did look like they were having a good time. We watched the proceedings for about 90 minutes and then heading on to other adventures. A great start to an incredible day.