Icelandic Houses, Part 1
The following description of Icelandic architecture dates from a book called “The North-west Peninsula of Iceland: being the journal of a tour in Iceland in the spring and summer of 1862, by Charles...
View ArticleIcelandic Houses: Part 2 (Rock)
The Icelandic sod houses that largely vanished in the last half of the twentieth century reflected the interests of peoples’ lives and in turn moulded the way they thought. That’s another way of saying...
View ArticleThe Novelist, Sod Roofs, and the Other People
Today I’d like to walk some paths between sod houses, Iceland, and Gunnar Gunnarsson’s inner world. All paths link in a vast web, each link of which is a starting point. My starting point today is a...
View ArticleColonial House Building 101, an Icelandic Novel
Gunnar Gunnarsson, Novelist and boy from the colonies, left Denmark (the colonial heartland) in 1939 to build a farm on Iceland (the colony) that would provide in a physical form the cultural direction...
View ArticleA Farm in Iceland is in the Iceland Review
When the Iceland Review asked its readers for 15 reasons why they loved Iceland, I thought: “15? Only 15? How is that possible?” Still, I was very brave and limited myself to 15, and they’re in the...
View ArticleThe Two Icelands (Well, Really Three)
There’s the pretty one. Borgarfjörður Eystri And across the street, the rusty one. All the fish are gone. Beautiful, though. With ruins in the foreground. And weird driftwood art. Neither is...
View ArticleGunnar Turns Over in His Grave
In March 1940, Gunnar told Nazi Germany about Icelandic architecture that blended with the land. He meant a mixture of German and Icelandic styles, such as his house at Skriðuklaustur, designed by the...
View ArticleHappy Ruins
Ruins in other countries don’t look… …well, so alive! But, that’s what building with the earth will do for you! Lagarfljót.
View ArticleWhat Does an Icelander Need a Ladder For?
Borgarfjördur Eystri Why, to keep the cows in. Of course.
View ArticleIcelandic Building Code
Arnarstapi Build what you want. Bright colours help with depression. Playground in Borgarness Really, that’s it. Dalvík
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