The Finnish Hobbyhorse Association
Welcome to the official website of The Finnish Hobbyhorse Association, the first and only formal hobby horse society in Finland. This page is made for you, who would like to know more about hobbyhorses directly from the enthusiasts.
Shortly about the association itself; it was originally founded around 2004, but registrated in 2016. We try to provide information and education about hobbyhorses and most of our functions are virtual connections in the Internet, but our biggest yearly project is The Finnish Hobbyhorse Championships. https://keppihevostensm.fi/
Our main principles are voluntarity – we don’t have paid staff -, doing things together as a community and complementarity.
What?
Understandably many of those who have just heard about our hobby are more or less confused.
The hobby includes despite riding, competing and coaching also making horses as realistic as possible, selling, collecting and trading them, organizing competitions and running the society. There are a lot of variety and every single hobbyhorsist can build their hobby from the parts they like.
Who?
There are two stereotypes about hobbyhorsists; we are either a bunch of school kids playing or a group of middle-aged women gone wild and jumping around the bushes.
A typical Finnish enthusiast is a girl between the ages of 12 to 18, but we don’t see age nor gender as a limit, everyone is welcome as they are.
We have a great deal of adults in our community, most of them are on their twenties and started when they were young and just never stopped. Some “seniors” do still ride and compete, some of them enjoy the sport and hobby otherwise.
We are often asked if we provide something for under school-aged kids. The thing is that most clubs and camps have 9-year age limit. We tend to follow that example since we anyways try to provide activities in a national level. We thing that under school-aged kids should get to enjoy the sport and play on their own, not to be pushed too much. The great side of this hobby is that everyone can do it everywhere, so give your child a horse and let them play!
Where and when?
We Finns take great pride of saying that the modern hobby horses as a hobby come from Finland and it started to grow as a trend during 19th century. Nowadays you can find hobbyhorse people anywhere around the world.
The most of hobbyhorse activity is unofficial and organized by youngsters among our community. There are also emerging riding clubs and other societies who provide competitions and camps. Our society itself tries to organize schooling and events in the highest level, educate trainers and societies so they could provide the best possible training-
Contact us
Email: skhh@skhhry.fi and international@skhhry.fi
Instagram: @skhhry and @keppihevosten_sm_kilpailut
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SKHHry/
Contact other hobbyhorse people
We also have an international Facebook-group, pease do join!