What started as a meager personal collectionThe Icelandic Phallological Museum is dedicated to collecting, studying and presenting actual phalluses and all things phallic
1974
The collection begins when our founder and original curator, Sigurður Hjartarson, is given a bull penis pizzle as joke by his teaching staff when he worked as a headmaster in the small town of Akranes. Giving him a phallus, became an ongoing joke and as some of the teachers had summer jobs at a whaling station, Sigurður got some interesting specimens, and an interest in collecting more mammal species developed.
1997
The museum opens in a small space downtown Reykjavík with 62 specimens along with multiple pieces of art and novelties, but Sigurður is by no means finished and he still aims to acquire the entire Icelandic mammal fauna, including the elusive human. Initially locals are reluctant to pay the museum a visit, many presuming the exhibit to be explicit and not the phallus museum it actually is.
2011
The Icelandic mammal fauna is completed when Sigurður finally gets a human specimen. He announces his retirement and declares that his son, Hjörtur, will take over. Hjörtur then moves the museum back to Reykjavík, again doubling the space for the ever growing collection, and modernizes the presentation. The following years the number visitors increases dramatically.
1980
Sigurður has amassed 13 phallic specimens, some of which are from whales, but he has almost half of the Icelandic land mammals. It is probably around this time that he decided to complete the entire Icelandic mammal fauna, and in the following years collecting will gain pace.
2004
The museum relocates to a a larger show space in Húsavík, often called the capital of whale-watching. The collection keeps growing with many foreign mammals being added and the visitors slowly increase. Eventually a visit to the museum is hand in hand with whale watching tourists and the foreign media begins to take notice.
2020
The popularity of the museum and size of the exhibit prompts the museum to move to its current location in the heart of Reykjavík, almost tripling the size of just the show space, and adding a phallic themed bistro. Presentation is elevated in every way and the reaction of visitors and media is extremely positive.