Penis museum is offered human samples

The founder of a penis museum has been inundated with offers to fill a major gap in his collection - a human specimen.

Although Sigurdur Hjartarson's Icelandic Phallological Museum boasts 261 penises, it still lacks a human one. However, four men have promised to donate theirs.

Mr Hjartarson's collection started as a hobby when he was given a bull’s reproductive organ 24 years ago. It now includes samples from 90 species – ranging from a 1.7 meter (5ft 6in) specimen of a sperm whale to a 2mm hamster penis bone which has to be viewed through a magnifying glass.



Most of the organs were donated by fishermen, hunters and biologists, said Mr Hjartarson. He paid for only one: an elephant penis nearly 1 meter (3ft 2in) long that hangs in the museum’s “foreign section”. But homo sapiens is not yet represented among the stuffed, dried and pickled samples that line the walls of the museum’s inconspicuous brown building in the quiet fishing village of Husavik.

This may soon be rectified, according to four certificates on display in which a German, an American, an Icelander and a Briton promised to donate their organs after death. The American, Stan Underwood, 52, went so far as to supply a description of his penis, nicknaming it “Elmo”, along with a life-size plastic mould.

According to Mr Hjartarson, about 6,000 visitors saw the collection last summer - 60 percent of them women.