To celebrate the International Day of the Icelandic Horse on 1 May, Horses of Iceland held a video competition on TikTok. The winner is Andre Samplawski with 440,000 likes!

Horses of Iceland would like to congratulate Andre Samplawski (soerviandbjoern on TikTok) on winning Horses of Iceland’s video competition on TikTok, held to celebrate the International Day of the Icelandic Horse is on 1 May. In total, 57 videos were entered in the video contest. To date, #dayoftheicelandichorse has received 23.5 million views and #horsesoficeland 25 million views.

Andre, who is studying to become a teacher, lives in Bavaria in Germany where he and his family have a farm with 40 Icelandic horses. “I like the character and the special gaits of the Icelandic horse, tölt and pace. On TikTok I publish a little bit about all my horses and I try to produce funny videos with my Icelandic horses. I started publishing more videos on TikTok when I saw your contest on Instagram. Now I have gained about 21k followers in two weeks and I’ll try to make more videos about the Icelandic horse.”

Andre’s winning video of a toy horse which seems to magically grow into a full-sized Icelandic horse when water is poured on it, received 440,000 likes, more than any other video entered in the competition. “I was really surprised because the video now has over 21 million views and this is crazy!” he comments.

Andre receives a full bridle set from Hrímnir, a year subscription to the online educational community with Ask Guðmar and a year subscription to Alendis.

Horses of Iceland project manager Jelena Ohm says: “We would like to raise awareness about the Icelandic horse to a younger generation. Since they are no longer on Facebook, we have to go to where the kids are today and one of the most popular online platforms for kids these days, is TikTok. Here, we have a fantastic opportunity to reach a very large number of viewers with light and funny content and we can also develop it into more educational posts in the future. We are really excited about the results of our first event on TikTok, where the idea is to get the Icelandic horse community to join the TikTok movement and together we can show the world what our beloved horse is all about.”

In the 4 weeks since Horses of Iceland started its TikTok account, 13 videos have been posted with a total of 975 likes. Followers number 278 and #horsesoficeland has received 25 million views.

Follow us on TikTok and watch all the videos entered in the contest on #dayoftheicelandichorse.

Text: Eygló Svala Arnarsdóttir.

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