I Dragged My Parents to a Penis Museum, and It Bored Them to Tears

Sigurður Hjartarson was only a boy when he was given a bull's penis as a gift. And though the cleaned, dried, and stretched bovine phallus was meant to be used as an animal whip, it sparked something in him. It gave birth to a dream. As the years progressed, he began to collect the penises of other animals, just for a laugh. Friends and colleagues who worked part time at the nearby whaling station in his native Iceland would present him with whale "specimens" to tease him, but soon he began to seek them out on his own, with purpose.

Hjartarson was gifted that bull penis in 1947. By 1980, his collection was just 13 in number. In 1990, it had grown to 34. In 1997, Hjartarson had a grand total of 62 different animal penises, and he was ready to share this bounty with the world. In August of that year, he opened up the Icelandic Phallological Museum in Reykjavik, Iceland's capital. Twenty years later, the museum is thriving. It's moved twice, and now boasts a chic downtown location across from a ramen shop and a total of 282 specimens from 93 different kinds of animals. And yes, because you're wondering, those 282 specimens include some bottled up human shlongs.

Hjartarson's quest to procure those human specimens was the subject of a 2012 documentary The Final Member.

The film centers on Hjartarson and two potential donors—an elderly Icelandic man with a womanizing past who pledged to give his manhood to the museum upon his death and a quirky American rancher named Tom Mitchell. Mitchell lovingly refers to his penis as "Elmo" and takes great pride in dressing it up in various outfits (and sending the snapshots to Hjartarson, who grows increasingly less tolerant of his antics as the film progresses). His goal is to surgically remove and donate his penis WHILE HE IS STILL ALIVE, with the hope of seeing Elmo become "the most famous penis in the world."

The Final Member is a wild ride from start to finish, and is the reason why, when my parents invited me to accompany them on a summer trip to Iceland, I decided I needed to subject them to a casual afternoon tour of Icelandic animal penises.

My parents are nothing if not supportive of my "career" in "journalism" and readily agreed to come along. When we got there, however, the reality of the situation sunk in. Both are well-respected, late career education professionals on the verge of retirement. While they were fine tagging along, they weren't exactly thrilled at the prospect of the photos accompanying the piece and having their faces immortalized online next to a bunch of giant, preserved whale dicks. Weird but OK!! As a compromise, I promised to cover their faces with emojis that corresponded to how they were feeling.

The museum was smaller than I'd imagined—a feeling I know most women can relate to on a deep, spiritual level. But it's still pretty much exactly the way I thought a shrine to the male sex organ would be. Penises of various shapes and sizes protrude from every wall and are crammed into glass cases that crowd every available surface.

Displayed alongside the hundreds of dead animal phalluses are hundreds of dad-level dick jokes. Case in point: This framed color print-out featuring the cartoon penises of various historical figures, including the likes of Bill Gates, Michael Jackson, and Adolph Hitler. While I appreciate the attention to detail here (see Einstein's balls depicted as a brain), the choice to use bold face Comic Sans AND to give notable androgynous model and singer Grace Jones her own penis, seems a bit problematic.

I spent my first 15 minutes in the museum methodically photographing everything. Every few minutes, my phone beeped to say it was almost out of space, but I could think of no better way to use up the last of its dwindling memory than to load it with 400 pictures of penises. Honestly, let this be a lesson to anyone who thinks it's OK to scroll backwards in my photos when I'm trying to show them a cute picture of my dog. SORRY, DEBORAH, THAT'S A PHOTO OF ME NEXT TO A GIANT SPERM WHALE COCK. WHAT DID YOU EXPECT WHEN YOU SWIPED LEFT?!?

There's an entire section of this museum dedicated to the penises of mythical creatures. I decided not to dwell on the fact that elves apparently have huge dongs that we can't see because they're invisible. But TBH, it's going to be hard to tell my future children about Santa's workshop without having that image in the back of my mind.

Another notable display features what appear to be silver casts of every penis on the 2008 Icelandic Olympic Handball team. The museum presents this without much fanfare, but a little post-peen museum digging led me to discover that the 2008 Icelandic Olympic Handball team did not, in fact, line up to stick their erect penises into plaster. These silver "casts" are instead based on the "personal experience" of the artist, Hjartarson's daughter, who has—to my knowledge—never actually seen any of these athletic Johnsons IRL. It kind of seems like she just eyeballed a picture of the team and was like, "Yeah, this is probably what that dude's dick looks like." A bold move that, like the existence of this museum in general, begs the question, "OK BUT WHY??"

Here's my father taking a skeptical look at the Icelandic Handball Team's fake silver penis casts.

My parents were unimpressed by the penis casts, and after about a half hour of silently perusing the peenz, I'd lost them both. Around a corner, I found my mother hiding out behind a row of sea mammal penises and a penis-shaped lamp, KNITTING A PAIR OF SOCKS. Bless this woman.

My dad finally emerged from the mythical creatures display looking somewhat defeated—"Are we done here, then?" he asked—and I decided it was probably time to leave before I again lost them in the vast sea of whale willys. We stepped out of the museum proper into the gift shop, and I briefly considered spending an ungodly amount of Icelandic krona on one of the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad T-shirt designs, which feature clever phrases like, "It's all about Dicks," "I'm NOT a donor," and, of course, "This museum is not for pussies" in a sleek, Impact-bold typeface.

The Icelandic Phallological Museum is a modern marvel, one of those weird-ass places you kind of have to check out if you're in Reykjavik and have nothing else to do. It's open every day from 10 AM to 6 PM, and admission is a cool 1,500 krona (around $15) for adults. If you're a terrible parent, you'll be happy to hear that kids under 13 can enjoy sights like this partially decomposing whale's penis for absolutely no cost.

My parents are decidedly not terrible. But they also weren't too impressed by a framed, prominently displayed photo of a naked, flaccid Tom Mitchell, either. We'll likely never speak of this day again.

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