Iceland marks centenary of influential cow Huppa

A gathering in Flúðir on Tuesday marked 100 years since the birth of Huppa, regarded as the founding matriarch of Iceland’s cattle breed. The event and the cow’s exceptional milk production were reported by mbl.is.

The meeting and celebration at a community hall drew a large crowd and ended with a birthday coffee. Huppa lived at Kluftir for most of her life and had 17 calves. She produced 40 per cent more milk than other cows, and her milk had a higher fat content. Some of her sons became influential breeding bulls around the country.

Guðrún Sveinsdóttir, from Hrafnkelsstaðir, recalled a bull descended from Huppa named Máni. She said he was the only bull she had not been afraid of, describing him as gentle and friendly in the barn and among the cows.

Huppa was three-coloured and polled, with a distinctive coat pattern. She was slaughtered in autumn 1943, aged 17. In 1940, people from Mývatn sent a truck south to Reykjavík to collect one of her bull calves. The calf, later known as Suðri 41090, became an important breeding bull and influenced cattle breeding in Mývatn and other parts of North Iceland.

Huppa’s origins remain disputed. Local stories linked her to a hidden bull, and Helgi Haraldsson of Hrafnkelsstaðir, a scholar and collector of folklore, was among those who maintained that she descended from one. Guðrún said Helgi told her that Huppa’s mother had stopped by a rock in Galtafell mountain while being led from Núpstún to a bull, and that a hidden bull appeared there. The cow later refused to mate with the bull at Galtafell, according to the story.

A recently published book by Jón Viðar Jónmundsson gives a different account, saying Huppa was sired by Björn from Birnustaðir. It traces her mother’s ancestry through cattle born in the 1920s and says the maternal line can be followed back to the 19th century.