The Settlement Exhibition (Reykjavík 871±2)
Landnámssýningin (Reykjavík 871±2)
The Settlement Exhibition, known as Reykjavík 871±2, is an underground archaeological museum in the heart of Reykjavík, built around the excavated remains of a Viking-age hall discovered beneath Aðalstræti. Visitors walk around the in-situ turf-walled longhouse ruins, displayed alongside multimedia reconstructions of how the hall and its surroundings would have looked.
Region
Reykjavík Capital Area
Coordinates
64.1475° N, 21.9428° W
Plan the stop
- Allow
- 1 hr
Accessibility
- Wheelchair · Full
- A modern underground museum with lift access and step-free routes around the excavation.
- Limited mobility · Full
- Level, step-free galleries reached by lift from street level.
- Sensory · Partial
- Dim, low-lit galleries with ambient soundscapes and projected imagery that some visitors may find disorienting.
- Cognitive · Full
- A compact, clearly signed circular route with multilingual multimedia interpretation.
Why it matters
The exhibition takes its name from the tephra layer known as the Settlement Layer, deposited by a volcanic eruption dated to 871±2, which seals the earliest human activity on the site. Its centrepiece is the ruin of a longhouse inhabited from about 930 to 1000, one of the oldest known dwellings in Reykjavík, with one of the largest hearths found in Iceland. North of the hall a fragment of turf wall built around 871 lies beneath the settlement tephra, making it among the oldest known man-made structures in the country and physical evidence that people were present at roughly the traditional date of Iceland's settlement given in the medieval sources. Discovered during construction work in 2001 and opened as a museum in 2006, the site is run by the Reykjavík City Museum and displays Viking-age finds recovered from central Reykjavík and the nearby island of Viðey.