Sunday, Jul 20, 2008
The curator of the world's only penis museum is a bit sensitive about some issues.
Mar 27, 2001 | In a world arguably obsessed with the penis, Iceland's Sigurdur Hjartarson could quite possibly be the most obsessed. A self-proclaimed "phallologist," he has been chasing after penises in his home country for over 25 years. He owns more than 100 penises, and he likely knows more about penile parts and penile behavior than any other living human. He is, in "phallological" circles, the Man.
If you visit him in Reykjavík, the capital of Iceland, and ask him to explain the differences between the penile parts of, say, a polar bear and a bearded seal, he will almost certainly respond helpfully, and in great detail. If you show proper respect for the science of phallology and ask him about his favorite penis, he will almost certainly demur and say something polite like "I like them all" or "I always like the last one the best." But if you dare to ask the world's only curator of a phallological museum about "that American reporter, the one who tried to write a feature story about you," he will almost certainly cringe.
That American reporter is, of course, me.
Though I am persona non grata with Hjartarson today, our relationship started on a friendly enough note nearly three years ago.
Near the end of my monthlong trip through Iceland, after seemingly visiting every major tourist attraction in the 110,000-population capital city, good fortune struck. On a street just off Laugevegur, the main drag of the old section of town, I spotted the Icelandic Phallological Museum. More good fortune: The curiously named museum, open just three hours a day, was open. The place was tiny (convenience store size) and the price was high (300 Icelandic krónur, or $4), but hell, I knew I'd never find a cheaper penis museum.
Inside, I was surrounded by more penises than at any point since high school gym classes. They were hanging on the walls, stuffed in jars, displayed with curatorial love -- dried penises, penises embalmed in formaldehyde, massive penises displayed like hunting trophies. A tanned bull's penis, a smoked horse's penis. There were runty, shriveled penises of reindeer, foxes, minks and rats. There were seal and walrus penises with stiff penis bones -- ensuring a perpetually erect state. There was the Big Penis -- a 3-foot-long blue whale penis (which could have been an oar for a canoe). There was even a picture of an eagerly anticipated addition to the collection, the Homo sapiens penis. (Icelander Pall Arason, born in 1915, signed an official document willing his penis to the museum.)
Overseeing this vast collection of penises was an unassuming white guy, probably in his 50s, who told me he believed it to be the only collection of its kind in the world. I revealed my fascination and my reporter identity, and said that I would, perhaps, like to contact him in the future about a story. He smiled, and gave me a business card: "Sigurdur Hjartarson, Director." He was happy to help.
I then purchased a few postcards of whale penises from his museum shop, I sent one to a friend with a guyish remark and that was it.
Until last spring. I had developed a terrible desire to return to Iceland for another summer trek. I started trolling around the Internet one day, just sentimentally keyword-searching for Icelandic things, when I remembered the penis collector.
A Web search soon revealed that the Icelandic Phallological Museum was not some kitschy, wax museum thing. Hjartarson, a schoolteacher and published author who wrote an Icelandic-to-Spanish textbook, was very serious about the science of phallology. He was expanding his collection. Two more humans had agreed to will their family jewels to Hjartarson. Foreign specimens, such as the phallic bone of an Ohio skunk and the testicles of a Danish red fox, were being added. Most significantly, though, after 25 years, Hjartarson was inching closer to his goal of collecting the penis of every mammalian species native to Iceland. (He had 40 of 42 penises.)
I started wondering: What possibly could have triggered his quest to collect every penis native to Iceland? And what would Hjartarson do once the 42nd Icelandic penis was obtained?
None of the pieces I read about the Phallological Museum sufficiently answered my questions. They were jokey news items, like a blurb from Philadelphia radio station Y100's "bizarro" file. And there was a short, double-entendre-laced wire piece: "Members Only at Iceland Phallological Museum." And Chuck Shepherd, of "News of the Weird," supposed connoisseur of the eccentric, devoted a mere paragraph to Hjartarson, with the dismissive headline "Too Much Time on Their Hands." None of the reporting on the penis museum answered my burning question: What did neighbors think when they saw the guy across the street lugging whale penises into his garage?
A void existed. A great story was still untold.
Get Salon in your mailbox!