An Anatomy of Iceland's Penis Museum

A collection that started as a joke now has a higher purpose.

A sculpture at the Icelandic Phallological Museum (Julie Beck)

REYKJAVIK Can we stop by the Icelandic Phallological Museum? one twenty-something guy semi-jokingly asks, leaning back in his seat on the bus back from a trip to Icelands Blue Lagoon, a popular geothermal spa.

Have you not been? one of his buddies asks. Dude, you have one day leftif you dont go, I will slap you in the face.

Whats in there? Some 400-year-old cocks? With signs like, This is how Iceland was made?

Having visited a few days prior, I tell them thats not the case. They dont care. They cackle and tell some more off-color jokes.

Aside from, you know, heartbreakingly spectacular nature, one of Icelands most unique tourist attractions is what is colloquially known as the Penis Museum, located on Reykjaviks busiest shopping street. It consists of one large room boasting shelves and glass cases filled with the penises of animals ranging in size from whales to hamsterssometimes just the bone, sometimes the whole thing, preserved in formaldehyde. (If you wonder, as I did, What about a Vagina Museum? there is, it seems, an exhibition called Museum of Vaginal Imagination at a museum in Rotterdam.)

Plenty of penis-themed artwork fills in the spaceweird whimsical touches like plastic flowers in a sperm whale penis vase and lamps made of scrotum skin. A small room off to the side has some tongue-in-cheek specimens from mythical creatures. (The trolls penis is just a rock.)

It originally started as a private collection, dating back to 1974, when Sigurdur Hjartarson, called Siggi, a headmaster in a secondary school in the port town of Akranes, received a pizzlea bulls penis sometimes used as a whipas a joke gift.

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, the museums website reads. Then the idea came up gradually that it might be interesting collecting specimens from more mammalian species.

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An Anatomy of Iceland's Penis Museum