About Us
.jpg)
We are a german/icelandic family of 4 humans, 3 funny dogs, 11 chicken and plenty of Icelandic horses. Here you can get to know us all.
Summer 2018 the guesthouse Cora´s House and Horses opend and the first guests started to come for short riding tours. Things went quite well until spring 2020, after that there were no more guests for a long time and only cancelations coming in. Even though people hoped to be able to come later that year, it was the same amount of cancelations as the amount of bookings in the end.
So Cora and Arnar had to come up with a new idea. They already had quite some horses, so they built a big riding arena and founded the riding school "Reiðskólinn á Bjarnastöðum í Ölfusi" which openend 01.June 2020 and has been very popular ever since.
Since the end of 2021 the number of guests is increasing again so now they are running, the riding school as well as the guesthouse and the riding tours at the same time.
This is us
was born 2011, daughter of Cora and Arnar. She goes to school in Hveragerði and her biggest hobby are animals. She loves teaching the dogs new tricks, playing with the chicken and of course take nearly any of our horses for a ride.
Lubbi
born 2009 is our oldest dog. He is half Labrador and half Border Collie mixed with Icelandic sheepdog. He has been with us since he was 8 weeks old and loves living in the country side. He really enjoys being with the kids and never wants to miss a party... and he loves food, actually food is in the first place, then the party.
Dreki
born 2017, is our smallest dog. He is half Border Collie, half Kings Charles Cavalier. He can run like a tall dog, but has a heart of a hamster. He knows he has done something wrong before he did it and sometimes needs a peptalk. His favorite thing is being a lap dog and get a lot of cuddles from Katla.
Dreki is one of the main characters in the Icelandic movie "Á Ferð með Mömmu" released in 2023.
Ronja
born 2019 is our only bitch and of course runs the place. She is half Icelandic sheepdog /half Border Collie with a bit of hunting dog. She has a funny colour, nobody knows where the stripes come from and she chose Cora as her human. Her favorite activity is to go on tractor rides with Cora for hours or join for horseback riding as well as helping Cora with the riding lessons.
was born in Germany in 1982, but has spent more then half her life on Iceland and has both citizenships. Cora is fluent in German, Icelandic and English and understands what we call Skandinavien. She first came to Iceland to work on a Holiday farm in 1999, where she helped with riding tours from 1h up to 1 week as well as training the horses. She has worked with icelandic horses ever since, mainly on Iceland, but also in Germany and Denmark. In 2009 Cora graduated from Hólar University in Hjaltadal in North Iceland, after three years of studying as a young horse trainer, horse trainer and riding teacher. Cora has worked on farms, such as Blesastaðir 1 A and Kjarr from where she got to know stallions such as Krákur frá Blesastöðum 1A and Stáli frá Kjarri. For many years Cora has been working on her own, training and breaking in horses for other people. In the end of 2016 Arnar and Cora bought the farm Bjarnastaðir in Ölfus South Iceland and started renovating it. While building up the place Cora worked at Eldhestar the biggest riding tour company in Iceland as a horse responsible, where she had to make sure that up to 300 horses are well taken care of as well as finding the right horse for each guest on the different tours.
was born in 2014, son of Cora and Arnar, goes to school in Hveragerði too. He likes to fix things, loves Badminton, but also likes to do any work on the farm and welcome our guests. So if there comes a tiny person to welcome you, it is most likely Kormákur.
Both kids speak Icelandic, but also quite some German and English.
Our Chicken
are a happy bunch of all kind of chicken, some are icelandic, some are Paparchicken, we have italien chicken and Easter egger? I actually don´t really know, but it also didn´t matter, those chicken were homeless so we gave them a home. They are very funny and comunicative animals. They have routines and hate to be hungry, so they will let you know if somebody disturbs their night rest, if there is a waiting line to lay eggs or if the food is empty. Their names are Ingibjörg, Stjarna, Anna, Rúna, Kolla littla, Hvítá, Gullbrá, Rauðhetta, Snjóhvít, Sandra and Skvísa.
Our Horses
... where to start? All our horses are family members. When you work so close with those animals every day and you trust them to take care of the tiny humans around them you have to know them just like the palm of your hand. Each an every horse is different, different in different weather, different in different times of the year, different with different humans. So we get to know our horses very well in order to make them do their best job every time. Each horse gets the care they need and some need more than others. We work closely with the vet, chiropractor and farrier to have every horse at their best condition at all times.
So the the first horses we introduce are the ones that moved here with us, Sleipnir, Ósk, Snæfríður and Busla and they are all still with us. We bred Sleipnir ourself and he is a pure "töltmachine". He is fun to ride for nearly anybody that knows a bit how to ride. We bought Snæfríður in 2011 when she was just born and when she grew up we trained her ourselves. She is evaluated with 7,89 in the breeding show and is now living outside with our other breeding mares, giving us the dearest foals. We bought Ósk in 2009 when she was 2 years old and she is a very willing and forward going riding horse for grownups but she is also teaching the kids how to ride. We bought Busla when she was 17. She has given us 1 foal and is now the favorite horse of our tiniest students in the riding school.
Through the years we have bought more horses, but we also were very lucky to get to use quite some horses of our friends for the Riding school . We are so glad to have those great people around us who entrust their incredible friends to us. We of course don´t make any difference between the horses. They are family members and they all have the right for respect, food and water.
Those are the names of the riding horses living with us: Eik, Freydís, Grámann, Hera, Hrafntinna, Höfði, Kanslari, Kisa, Kraftur, Laksi, Ljóska, Mosa, Mæja, Neisti, Óðinn, Össur, París, Tæson, Stjarna, Sómi and Þýður.
And then we also have horses that were born in the past 5 years as well as our breeding mares.
Birta, Snæfríður, Auður, Bjarngrímur, Hátign, Bjarni, Hárekur, Glóey, Bjarnfríður, Hrafnkatla and Svarti Stormur.
Cora Jovanna Claas
Katla Björk
was born in 1978 in Iceland. He grew up in Reykjavík, but spend all his summer holidays in the countryside helping his family with cows, sheep, horses and any work on the farm that needed to be done. Arnar is a mechanical engineer and works with geothermal energy. He supervises the drilling for hot water for the company Mannvit in Reykjavík. Arnar is fluent in English and Icelandic and fine in German. He is the handy man on Bjarnastaðir, fixing everything from a broken tractor to the chicken stable as well as renovating the house and stable.
Kormákur Tumi
Arnar Bjarki Árnason
