Let’s Talk About Penises

Oi. Stop giggling. 

Here at SheSociety we are an online publication ‘for women by women’, and we cover hot topics on womanly needs. For example you can check out our latest article on Menstrual cups vs Tampons.

But today, I want to talk about Penis’. Why? You may ask… Because I visited a penis museum in Iceland and it was pretty interesting and educational. Oh, and I also visited it with my Mum. #motherdaughterbonding. 

The Icelandic Phallological Museum is not what I first thought it was going to be. Initially I giggled and joked to mum saying we should go there, because I’m immature and still blush at intimate scenes in movies. She, however, was all for it and so we went. 

I bought our tickets (without making eye contact with the young man at the counter) and in we went. We walked through the door, and were standing in a room full of literal dicks. I’m talking real life, preserved in jars, animal penis’. 

The museum contains a collection of more than 200 penises and penile parts belonging to almost all the land and sea mammals that can be found in Iceland, and it was actually really cool.

The museum was founded by Sigurður Hjartarson, who is a historian and worked as a principal and teacher for 37 years. As a child he was sent into the countryside during summer vacations and was given a pizzle (bull’s penis) as a whip for the animals. In 1974 he was working as a headmaster in a secondary school, and some of the teachers used to work on a whaling ship nearby during the summer. They started to bring in whale penis’ to Hjartarson teasingly, but gradually he realised that it would be interesting to collect them. And the rest is, as they say, history. 

Within the museum there are 55 specimens belonging to 16 different kinds of whale, one specimen taken from a rogue polar bear, 36 specimens belonging to seven different kinds of seal and walrus, and more than 115 specimens originating from 20 different kinds of land mammal, including that of Homo sapiens.  

It was quite an education seeing the stark difference between all of the various creatures, not only in size but also in shape. 

The museum is quite popular, with people not only donating specimens but also moulds of their own ‘downstairs regions’…. Even the Icelandic National Handball Team who were silver medalists in the 2008 Beijing Olympics ‘rose to the occasion’.

If you want to find out more about the museum head on over to their website, it’s probably one of the more interesting museums I’ve visited in my lifetime, that’s for sure. https://phallus.is/en/

Oh, and they also sell penis shaped pasta, so if your partner is annoying you one week you could send them a not so subtle message to ‘Eat a Dick’.