Reykjavík Grapevine - 10.02.2006, Blaðsíða 42

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Television personality and Akranes native
Sigrún Ósk Kristjánsdóttir once described her
home town as “a postage stamp.” While this
town of about 6,000 people is certainly off
the beaten track, the Reykjavík bus company
Strætó hf has recently extended its city bus
service to include Akranes. This means you can
now travel to Akranes, which is 49 kilometres
from Reykjavík, for the same 250 ISK you
would pay to take the bus to the mall, making
Akranes one of the best travel deals within
Iceland.
Akranes was first settled in 880 by Irish settlers
(the more well known of whom are a pair of
Irish brothers, Þormóður and Ketill Bresason),
credited as creating one of the first uniquely
Christian settlements in Iceland. The Celtic
heritage is honoured each second week of
July in Akranes with Irish Days, a seven-day
family-oriented festival. The attractiveness
of the area as a settlement is readily apparent
as you head into the town - a wide, relatively
flat peninsula flanked by a long sandy beach,
Langisandur, along the north coast and the
bowl-shaped Mt. Akrafell to the east. Like
many other “small” towns in Iceland, it’s ex-
periencing something of a construction boom
- new sites for apartments and houses are being
cleared in the eastern part of town - but unlike
other coastal settlements, Akranes is also fairly
spread out. So much so that I actually managed
to lose my way while wandering the streets of
this town.
My first stop was Café Galito, a coffee
shop-cum-bistro featuring standard fare for
reasonable prices. On ordering what I thought
would be a standard Swiss mocha, I was
surprised to find one of the best Swiss mochas
I’ve ever had, as real chocolate - not chocolate
syrup - was used to flavour it. The drink alone
was worth the bus fare.
I spoke briefly with Gunnar Hafsteinn
Ólafsson, the chef, who told me that he trained
as a chef and worked in Reykjavík and Styk-
kishólmur, but returned to Akranes. When
asked why, he said, “This is my home town.
The housing was pretty affordable, too, and it’s
a good place to raise your kids.”
I asked Gunnar if he saw a lot of tourists in
Akranes.
“Not as much as when the ferry was still go-
ing,” he said. “Then you would see downtown
filled with tourists in the summertime. But I
think with the bus coming up here we should
be seeing more of them.”
Completely unfamiliar with area, I asked
what there was to do in Akranes.
“Well the Sports Museum of Iceland is
here,” he said, “and there’s the historical mu-
seum. Oh, and you should definitely check out
the rock museum.”
“Rock museum?” I asked. “Is that like Ice-
land’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?”
“No, I mean like rocks. Stones,” he said.
“There are four or five museums, and they’re all
right next to each other.”
Gunnar gave me directions, telling me to
look for an old ship as a landmark.
As it turned out, Gunnar wasn’t exaggerat-
ing - all of Akranes’ museums are situated right
next to each other, sometimes even sharing the
same building, which definitely saves you a lot
of walking-around time.
A Guide to Football Town and A Troll
King’s Master Bedroom
The first museum I visited was the Folk Muse-
um at Garðar. Here you can find memorabilia
from Settlement times to the early 20th centu-
ry. As I was completely alone in the museum, I
could explore at my own pace. What makes the
Folk Museum at Garðar unique is its layout:
you don’t walk in at Settlement times and end
up in the 1950s. Instead, the rooms are divided
more by theme than period: one room featur-
ing musical instruments had everything from
medieval violinesque devices to 12-button ac-
cordions; another showed fishing implements,
including various and sundry harpoons used
for whaling throughout the ages. The jewel of
the museum is supposedly the “Field Mouse”
(a 1946 Renault sedan won by a Jóhannes J.
Bachmann from the Tuberculosis Patients’
lottery the same year), but I found myself more
interested in the Victorian-era medical tools,
the collection of manual typewriters, and the
replicas of the unfeasibly tiny beds that people
used to sleep in during the Middle Ages.
I had originally wanted to see Garðarhúsið,
the first cement house of its kind built in
Iceland or any of the Nordic countries for
Iceland’s Irish Roots,
A City Bus Ride Away
Akranes
by Paul F. Nikolov photos by Gúndi
42
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