Glaumbær Turf Farm
Glaumbær
Glaumbær is a well-preserved turf farmhouse in the Skagafjörður valley of Northwest Iceland, now the centrepiece of the Skagafjörður Heritage Museum. Its interconnected grass-roofed rooms, built of stacked turf, stone, and timber around narrow passages, show how Icelandic farming families lived from the Middle Ages into the twentieth century.
Region
Northwest Iceland
Coordinates
65.6119° N, 19.5073° W
Plan the stop
- Allow
- 1 hr
Accessibility
- Wheelchair · None
- A historic turf farmhouse with low doorways, raised thresholds, and narrow, uneven passages; the interior is not step-free, though the grounds and separate exhibition buildings are more accessible.
- Limited mobility · Limited
- Level grass approach to the buildings, but the turf farmhouse has low doorways and tight internal passages; two nearby 19th-century timber houses hold exhibitions and a café.
- Sensory · Partial
- The turf rooms are dim and confined; the grounds and café are open and calm.
- Cognitive · Full
- A clear route through the connected rooms with interpretive signage and staff on hand.
Why it matters
Glaumbær has been a farm since the earliest days of Icelandic settlement, and its most famous inhabitants belong to the Vinland story: according to the Saga of the Greenlanders, Guðríður Þorbjarnardóttir and her husband Þorfinnur Karlsefni settled at Glaumbær after their voyages to North America, and their son Snorri Þorfinnsson, held to have been the first child of European descent born in the Americas around 1005, farmed here and had the first church built at Glaumbær. Guðríður, one of the most travelled women of the Viking age, is said to have ended her life at Glaumbær as an anchoress, and a modern statue of her with her son stands on the site. The present turf buildings, thirteen rooms in all, date mainly from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and were saved from demolition in the 1930s; the farm opened as a folk museum in 1952 and is one of the best-preserved turf farm complexes in Iceland.