Long time readers know that if you want your Instagram feed to look fresh as hell, you should get yourself to Iceland. But what about all that work you need to do back at the office? Fortunately, Iceland’s tourism bureau has created a helpful new service to assist you: Outhorse Your Email.

With it, you can “disconnect from work and let the horses of Iceland reply to your emails while you are on vacation”. Their website shows three different horses, each with their own skillset.¹ To test it out, I chose “Hekla frá Þorkellshóli”, both because they’re “trained in corporate buzzwords” and also because they stuck out their tongue in their official photo:

Hekla is embracing the glorious imperfection.

Here’s a sample message provided by Hekla:

Bilbo McWorkerstein is away on vacation and not able to respond to your email. Meanwhile, Bilbo has OutHorsed all emails to an Icelandic horse called Hekla frá Þorkellshóli, who is trained in corporate communications.

Here is Hekla frá Þorkellshóli’s response:

Aælkj5hbyiu89 n89u ð´’i2+ji hð9 u3boæjrk2 n 9089ui qeægj eronbqo ð gnjqergni8h aq fear i

Qfiuoq4uhhæ 34 4 4 ædoifuuuuuuuuua q34o

This email was composed by an Icelandic horse using a giant keyboard for horses. Seriously.

OutHorse your email at: http://www.outhorseyouremail.com

Bilbo will return to work on July 1, 2022.

Now some of you might be thinking that Hekla’s reply was unintelligible, perhaps even meaningless. I can only advise that you hide your ignorance! After all, this is the name of a town in Iceland:

Who even knew an accented “y” character existed?

Far from being gibberish, that response is written in perfect Icelandic business prose, which these horses have clearly mastered.

Footnotes:

1. The key video from the OutHorseYourEmail website is archived here. ↩︎