Words by

Catharine Fulton

The police were called out to Svínadal, in northwest Iceland, this morning after locals had spotted two polar bears loitering just outside of town, RÚV reports.
On the rare occasion that a polar bear makes its way to Iceland from Greenland they are promptly shot. However when police arrived to deal with the Svínadal polar bears they were faced with something even rarer than a member of the ursidae family swimming across the north Atlantic. They discovered that the people of Svínadal confused polar bears with the most populous animals in Iceland. Sheep.
The “polar bears” turned out to be two white sheep. And everybody likely had a good laugh.