WALKING AROUND REYKJAVIK, ICELAND, Part II, Guest Post by Caroline Hatton

Reykjavik, Iceland. Looking down from the Hallgrimskirkja church tower: Across the street, Einar Jonsson Sculpture Museum and Garden.

My friend Caroline Hatton, a children’s writer and frequent contributor to this blog, loved strolling through Reykjavik in June 2023 and taking all photos in this post. This is Part 2 of her report. Part 1 appeared last week.

I stayed near the far end of Lauvavegur, the main shopping street downtown. From there, I walked in a few minutes to the seashore and in less than half an hour to everything else I saw. Here are some outdoor highlights.

THE EINAR JONSSON SCULPTURE MUSEUM GARDEN

Glima (wrestling) or is it tango? Sculpture by Einar Jonsson, 1912-1927.

Online photos of the late Einar Jonsson’s sculptures didn’t show anything I liked, so I didn’t want to pay to visit the museum building. But walking through the surrounding garden was free, a chance to see a variety of sculptures I did find interesting.

Sorg (grief), sculpture by Einar Jonsson 1926-1927.

The garden sculptures’ balletic grace and emotional impact were a pleasant surprise.

CORRUGATED-IRON-CLAD BUILDINGS

Old corrugated-metal-clad home.

After realizing for the first time that a nearby building was covered with painted corrugated metal, I started seeing many more everywhere, primary red, blue, and yellow, grass green, pastels, black, white, gray, khaki, sage, merlot, burgundy, moss green, eggplant! Corrugated-iron-clad buildings are uniquely Icelandic and Reykjavik has the largest cluster in the world. After living in turf homes for about a thousand years, Icelanders started building wooden and stone houses, then covering wooden ones with imported corrugated iron. The metal layer kept occupants warm and dry in fierce wind and rain, and safer from fire.

Modern corrugated-metal-clad home.

Most of Reykjavik’s ironclad homes were built between 1880 and 1925, but I saw one modern example.

 STREET FOOD

Baejarins Beztu Pylsur, Icelandic hotdog stand on the right. One of many locations.

As a last outdoor experience to write about, the only street food I tasted was a famous Icelandic specialty… a hotdog, from Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur. At noon on a June Thursday, I was the 20^th in line at the hotdog stand. Of the standard trimmings, chopped raw onions, crispy onions, ketchup, mustard, and remoulade, I wanted only crispy onions (which went in the bun first, with the hotdog on top to hold them down) and the mustard (a mushroom mustard which was tan-colored and mild-tasting). The thin long hotdog was a mix of lamb, beef, and pork meat. I almost never eat the first two and rarely the third, but I made an exception for the sake of a cultural experience. It was a satisfying lunch on a sidewalk bench and it cost only 690 Icelandic kronur (US $5), which is uncharacteristically cheap for food in Iceland.

 Before and after this lunch, I visited museums, but that’s another story.

 

All text and photos, copyright Caroline Arnold. www.theintrepidtourist.blogspot.com