As of early 2020 the museum moved to a new location in Hafnartorg, three times the size of the previous one, and the collection holds well over 300 penises from more than 100 species of mammal.

Its detachment from the donor's body did not go according to plan and it was reduced to a greyish-brown shriveled mass that was pickled in a jar of formalin.

He obtained the organs of Icelandic animals from sources around the country, with acquisitions ranging from the 170 cm (67 in) front tip of a blue whale penis to the 2 mm (0.08 in) baculum of a hamster, which can only be seen with a magnifying glass.

The museum claims that its collection includes the penises of elves and trolls, though, as Icelandic folklore portrays such creatures as being invisible, they cannot be seen.

According to its mission statement, the museum aims to enable "individuals to undertake serious study into the field of phallology in an organized, scientific fashion.

His daughter Þorgerður recalls that she was once sent to a slaughterhouse to collect a specimen but arrived just as the workers were taking a lunch break: "Someone asked, 'What's in the basket?'

He decided, more as a hobby than a job, to put it on public display in Reykjavík and was awarded a grant from the city council of ISK 200,000 to support the opening of a museum in August 1997.

[11] After his retirement, he moved along with his collection to Húsavík, a fishing village with a population of about 2,200 people located 298 miles (480 km) northeast of the capital.

The museum was housed in a small building, formerly a restaurant,[11] that was marked with a giant wooden penis and a stone phallus standing outside on the street.

[2] In 2012 he handed over the collection to his son, Hjörtur Gísli Sigurðsson (described by Slate as "the world's only hereditary penis-museum operator"[7]).

Its largest exhibit is a portion of a blue whale's penis measuring 170 cm (67 in) long and weighing 70 kilograms (150 lb),[18] which Iceland Review has dubbed "a real Moby Dick".

"[8] The museum also has a "folklore section" exhibiting mythological penises; its online catalogue lists specimens reportedly taken from elves, trolls, kelpies, and "The Nasty Ghost of Snæfell".

[11] The folkloric penises also include those of a merman, a one-legged, one-armed and one-eyed monster called a Beach-Murmurer, an Enriching Beach Mouse (said to draw "money from the sea to enrich her owner"), and an Icelandic Christmas Lad reportedly found dead at the foot of a mountain in 1985 and whose penis was presented to the museum by a former mayor of Reykjavík.

"[2] According to Slate, these sculptures were created by Sigurður's daughter, Þorgerður Sigurðardóttir, and were based on her own experience rather than any knowledge of the team.

Canadian film-maker Zach Math comments that the American, Tom Mitchell, "is an ordinary guy but he has this quirk where he thinks of his penis as a separate entity from his body—Elmo.

"[11] Mitchell sent a cast of his penis to serve as a substitute in the meantime,[18] along with photographs of it dressed up as Santa Claus and Abraham Lincoln.

[31] The Icelandic donor was a 95-year-old man from nearby Akureyri who was said to have been a womaniser in his youth and wanted to donate his penis to the museum to ensure his "eternal fame".

"[18] His penis was given priority over those of the non-Icelandic donors in accordance with the museum's mission to display the organs of Icelandic mammals.

Removing and preserving it was not an easy proposition, as Sigurður explained: "The donor and the doctors are in agreement, it must be taken while the body is warm.

"[2] Visitors' most common reaction to the preserved human penis is "that it's very old, you know, a bit shrunken, and the male members [sic] say 'oh, I hope mine will not look like this when I get old.

"[2] American writer and actor Jonah Falcon, known for his claim to an impressively sized penis, was invited by the museum via The Huffington Post to donate his member after his death.

The famous groupie, whose real name was Cynthia Albritton, donated the item to the museum in April 2022, shortly before her death.

[34] The museum is the subject of The Final Member, a film by Canadian documentarians Zach Math and Jonah Bekhor.

Bekhor says: "I wouldn't say it's a Rorschach test, but depending on how you react to it really says a lot about what your relationship is with that element of the human anatomy.