A collection built from an unusual first gift
The museum’s origin story begins with a bull’s penis given to a local teacher by friends. What might have remained a private joke became the start of a collection: each new specimen widened its scope from one animal to the anatomy of many kinds of mammals.
That growth required more than simply putting objects in cases. Biological specimens must be preserved so they can be handled or displayed without rapidly deteriorating, and they need to be identified and organized. In a museum devoted to phallology—the study of penises and related anatomy—the result is a comparison visitors can make across species, rather than a single curiosity viewed in isolation.
Why the display is more than a novelty
The specimens show how much bodily structures can vary among mammals. Their form and scale are shaped by each species’ anatomy and reproductive biology, so seeing examples together turns an awkward subject into a concrete lesson in animal diversity. The collection’s breadth also makes the museum an unusual kind of natural-history attraction: the organizing idea is narrow, but the animals represented are not.
That contrast helps explain its appeal. Visitors arrive expecting a joke, then encounter a catalogued collection that asks them to look closely at anatomy. The memorable detail is not only how unusual the subject is, but how a casual gift grew into a public record of bodily variation across Iceland’s land and marine mammals.
