Northern Exposures

Random Memorandum™ to Sigurður Hjartarson, founder of the Icelandic Phallological Museum, home of the world’s largest collection of penises: Tell me, sir, as a teacher and historian, what is phallo-logical about a public display of private parts? When I was a lad growing up on a remote farm in Lincolnshire (where Missus Buckley lived), I was taught that one’s privates — one’s John Thomas, Jimmy Wriggler or Tallywhacker — were just that: Private! Your online bile, or rather, bio states that your interest in phallology “grew out” of a fascination that began when you were given a bull’s penis to use as a cattle whip as a boy in Reykjavik, Iceland. Methinks your parents were likely out of their gourds on gløgg or grögg or whatever volcanically-alcoholic national beverage they were guzzling at the time, and should have been bull whipped for their unthinkable indiscretion. That said, at some point this prickly fascination — like the rent in the museum — is all yours. While I have yet to police your facility in person, I have it on authority that you have for public viewing the dandy doodles of over 200 land and sea creatures, ranging from the 170 cm blue whale’s penis to the embarrassing 2 mm bone of a hamster. Penises hanging on walls like hunting triumphs, a tanned bull’s penis, a smoked horse’s penis, the shriveled penises of reindeer, fox, minks and rats, seal and walrus penises, even the "imaginary penises" of elves and trolls, all displayed with curious curatorial affection and/or affliction. One struggles to imagine that there are patrons for such distastefulness. Is there an audience clamoring to see a marsupial’s meat musket? A grizzly bear’s yard o’ beef? A pink flamingo’s pink cigar? Explain this cock and bullcock business at once!