Icelandic Phallological Museum - Collection

Collection

According to the museum's website, the collection comprises 280 specimens from 93 species of animals. They range from some of the largest to some of the smallest penises in the animal world. Its largest exhibit is a portion of a blue whale's penis measuring 170 cm (67 in) long and weighing 70 kilograms (150 lb), which Iceland Review has dubbed "a real Moby Dick". The specimen is only the front tip as the entire organ, when intact, would have been about 5 m (16 ft) long and weighed about 350–450 kilograms (770–990 lb). The penis bone of a hamster, only 2 mm (0.08 in) long, is the smallest item in the collection and needs a magnifying glass to view it.

The museum also has a "folklore section" exhibiting mythological penises; its online catalogue lists specimens taken from elves, trolls, kelpies, and "The Nasty Ghost of Snæfell". Sigurður says that the elf's penis, which the museum's catalogue describes as "unusally big and old", is among his favourites. It cannot be seen, as Icelandic folklore holds that elves and trolls are invisible. The folkloric penises also include those of a merman, a one-legged, one-armed and one-eyed monster called a Beach-Murmurer, an Enriching Beach Mouse (said to draw "money from the sea to enrich her owner"), and an Icelandic Christmas Lad found dead at the foot of a mountain in 1985 and whose penis was presented to the museum by a former mayor of Reykjavik.

The museum's website states that it enables "individuals to undertake serious study into the field of phallology in an organized, scientific fashion", giving due prominence to a field that until now has only been "a borderline field of study in other academic disciplines such as history, art, psychology, literature and other artistic fields like music and ballet." The museum aims to collect penis specimens from every mammal in Iceland. It also exhibits phallic artwork and penis-related objects or "phallobilia" such as lampshades made from the scrotums of bulls. Other exhibits range "from an 18th-century engraving depicting the circumcision of Christ to a 20th-century plastic penis pacifier." Most of the collection has been donated, and the only purchase to date has been an elephant's penis measuring nearly 1 m (3.3 ft) long. The penises are either preserved in formaldehyde and displayed in jars or are dried and hung or mounted on the walls of the museum.

Sigurður has used a variety of techniques to preserve the penises, including preservation in formaldehyde, pickling, drying, stuffing and salting. One particularly large penis taken from a bull has been converted into a walking stick. Many of the museum's exhibits are illuminated by lamps made by Sigurður from rams' testicles. Sigurður has also carved wooden phalluses, which can be found adorning various objects around the museum, and has a bow tie decorated with images of phalluses that he wears on special occasions.

Josh Schonwald of Salon.com described his impressions of the museum when he visited in 1998:

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).

The museum is open every day and by July 2011 was attracting up to 11,000 visitors annually. Sixty percent of the museum's visitors are reported to be women, though according to the authors of the Rough Guide to Iceland mention of the museum "causes the staff at the tourist office to blush with embarrassment." It has attracted attention from the international media, most recently as the result of the donation of a human penis to the collection.