Eiríksstaðir
Eiríksstaðir is a Viking-age farm site in the Haukadalur valley of the Dalir district in West Iceland, with the excavated ruins of a small turf longhouse and, about a hundred metres away, a full-scale reconstructed turf-and-timber longhouse run as a living-history museum through the summer months.
Region
West Iceland
Coordinates
65.0592° N, 21.5389° W
Plan the stop
- Allow
- 1 hr
Accessibility
- Wheelchair · Limited
- The reconstructed longhouse has a low turf doorway and an earthen floor with no step-free entry; the outdoor path to the ruins is grass and gravel.
- Limited mobility · Limited
- A short but uneven grass-and-gravel walk from the parking area to the reconstructed house and the excavated ruins.
- Sensory · Full
- A quiet, open valley setting; the interior of the reconstructed house is dim and smoky when the hearth is lit.
- Cognitive · Full
- A single small building with a costumed guide who explains the site.
Why it matters
According to the Vinland sagas and the Book of Settlements, Eiríksstaðir was the farm of Eiríkur Þorvaldsson, known as Erik the Red, who lived here before being outlawed from the district and sailing west to found the Norse settlement of Greenland around 985. Tradition holds that his son Leifur Eiríksson, Leif Erikson, whom the sagas credit with reaching Vínland in North America around the year 1000, was born at Eiríksstaðir. Archaeological excavations between 1895 and 2002 uncovered the foundations of a longhouse of roughly 50 square metres with a long central hearth, dated to the 10th century, along with a small pit-house; the site is protected as a ruin. The reconstructed longhouse nearby, opened in 2000 for the millennium of Leif's Vínland voyage, was built with period tools, driftwood, and turf, and is staffed in costume during the summer to demonstrate Viking-age daily life.