Day 198-visiting Árbær

   July 20-Pam and Marilyn made us a hearty breakfast and then the Hays family walked over to the 871+/-2 museum to join a tour of an archaeological excavation being carried out next to the current Parliament building.  The structures being excavated date back to the first couple centuries of settlement and include an iron-working area, where bog iron was smelted and used to make various important objects for the early settlers.  The three hearths in the foreground of the left-hand picture below may have been used for different purposes.  The middle one is discolored and cracked, indicating that it was subjected to particularly high temperatures.  There was also evidence that some fish-processing took place at the site, including fish hammers.  Spencer is holding half of one such hammer in the right-hand picture below.  The doughnut-shaped rock would have a wooden handle in it and the hammer was used to pound fish flat.  Then they were dried and eaten like potato chips.

   We returned to Pam and Marilyn‘s and drove over to the Reykjavík city museum at the site of the former Árbær farm.  This open air museum has preserved the buildings of the old farm and other historic buildings from around Iceland have been brought in over the past half century to be preserved and displayed.  The museum staff were dressed up in period costumes and readily answered questions about the buildings.  The ages of the buildings were more like America than Europe, with the oldest buildings only dating back to 1820.

The museum's collection was quite varied, with houses of the rich, like the grey house on the left, and houses of the common worker, like the black one on the right. These mostly date to ca. 1900.

We went on the guided tour of the original farm buildings, shown here from the west side. The oldest building is on the far right, and each of the painted buildings were built successively as Árbær took on more of a role as an inn for travellers heading east from Reykjavík as the city grew during the 19th century.  By the early 20th century, residents of Reykjavík would make daytrips to Árbær to eat and relax.

The south side of the old part of the Árbær farmhouse. The kids stand in the entry way to the barn. 

The kitchen in the old part of the farmhouse. The pot on the lower right would be filled with hot water twice a year and all of the people on the farm would bathe, starting with the man of the house and then others in turn, depening on their importance, until the kids of the workers had their turn.  By that time, the water was dirty and cold!

Our tour guides demonstrate the use of the askur, the traditional wooden dinner bowl. Soups were put in the bowl and solid food was eaten off of the open lid. When finished, a person would put the askur on the floor and let the dog and cat lick it out to clean it up. Then it would be put away. We were sitting in the second floor of one of the newer Árbær farm buildings where the entire family would sleep, eat, and do most of their indoor chores in winter. It would get pretty tight, but that kept the family warm.

This church was moved to Árbær from northern Iceland. It dates back to the mid-1800s and is still used for church services occasionally. While we were at the museum, a group showed up to celebrate a woman's birthday. She surprised them by changing intoa wedding gown and announcing that they were actually going to attend her wedding! Here, she and her father are being led into the church by the minister.

The Danish king forced Iceland to convert to Lutheranism in the mid-1500s, but the change-over only partially occurred. For instance, the rood screen from Catholic churches were carried over to Lutheran churches.
We also learned that seating arrangements were strictly governed in medieval Icelandic churches. Usually, the famer who owned the church was the priest and he would have the most important farmers sit in front of the rood screen near him. On this side of the screen, men sat on the right and women sat on the left, with the less important members of society sitting further back in the church. The unmarried ladies sat in the very front on the left-hand side, facing towards the congregations, so the farmers could select suitable brides for their sons. The same seats on the right-hand side were reserved for criminals, who would sit here in full view of the congregation, so they could be publicly shamed.

These two warehouses from eastern Iceland are the oldest buildings at Árbær, built in 1820.

These two rooms would suffice for a family of five around 1900.

A Fordson fire engine.

The steam roller was used on Reykjavík streets for many years. The steam locomotive was used on a single line for a few years to carry stones from a quarry to the Reykjavík harbor, when it was being built. This was the one and only time that a railway has ever been in use in Iceland.

   We had soup and bread at the museum‘s café and then wandered around the museum's buildings and exhibits the rest of the afternoon.  We then spent the early evening shopping all around Reykjavík.  We had intended to head for home after that, but Pam and Marilyn invited us for supper and by the time we finished eating, it was late enough that we took them up on their offer to spend another night as well.

   After the kids went to bed, we had a great time comparing our experiences in Iceland these past seven months.  While our locations and vacations styles differed fairly dramatically, our overall impressions of Iceland were remarkably similar.  We all agreed that Icelanders are very friendly and that we have enjoyed our time here immensely.  Iceland‘s small size and relative isolation has had some interesting effects on the psyche of Icelanders and consequently on their society.  Much of it boils down to the “big fish in a small pond“ problem and an unrealistic assumption that the solutions and procedures that work with a relatively isolated population of 320,000 people can realistically be applied to interconnected countries  with populations and economies that are orders of magnitude larger.

   One good example is the recent statement by the Icelandic prime minister that the EU should look to Iceland as an example when trying to solve the economic problems of Greece, Italy, and Spain.  However, to scale up the financial assistance that Iceland received since the 2008 crash to match the sizes of those countries is practically impossible.  That is a fact that is hard to grasp when you do not accept the differences in size between Iceland and these nations.