Reykjavík Grapevine - 14.10.2018, Blaðsíða 52

52 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 14— 2018
Under the incredible mountains of
Vestrahorn, near Stokksnes in the
Southeast of Iceland, you can find an
odd film set for a Viking blockbuster
that was never made. The village has
been there for around five years, and
nobody really knows what to do with it.
How to avoid mental
breakdown
It was in the beginning of August when
my girlfriend, Hanna, and I were trying
to find something to do near Höfn í
Hornafirði with our two tireless sons,
who were literally screaming for either
more activity, or a mental breakdown.
The town of Höfn is beautiful, and
has one of the most impressive harbours
I’ve found in the small towns of the
South. There are fantastic restaurants
close to the working dock, where the
fisherman unload their catch of the
day, which was more or less enough
entertainment for me and Hanna. But
this was, of course, not enough for two
savvy little tech monsters suffering
hectic withdrawal symptoms from the
city life.
Something to see
In my desperation, I called a friend of
mine in Hafnarfjörður who knows the
area pretty well, and asked him what to
do around Höfn that didn’t cost a fairly
broke family a fortune. His answer
became a simple question: “Have you
heard about the weird movie set at
Stokksnes?” My answer was of course,
no. “A movie set? For what movie?” I
replied.
“Trust me, it’s something to see,” he
answered.
To be fair, there are a lot of activities
around Höfn, but your choices narrow
severely when you have to take a four
year old and a ten year old with you. So,
the movie set sounded like a godsend.
Mental breakdown was avoided—for
now.
Tiny Ísland
Stokksnes is around a 15-minute drive
from Höfn. You turn off the main road
just before the tunnel to Djúpivogur,
and drive for ten minutes on a gravel
road.
Finally we came to a small place
called the Viking Café. It was plain,
but had good accommodation. Two
women worked at the coffee house, and
of course, it turned out that I new one of
them pretty well. That’s Iceland for you.
I asked her almost immediately
about the village, which I couldn’t see
from the café. She was evasive in her
answers, until she told me to follow a
road east on foot. “It’s ten minute walk.
Trust me, you can’t miss it,“ she told
me.
The incredible valley
We marched on up the path. At the top,
we reached an incredible valley with
a long black beach on one side, and
the massive hills of Vestrahorn on the
other, disappearing into thick grey
clouds that hid the mountaintop. On
the beach there were horses looking for
something to eat, while a little down
the road there were chickens running
around that belonged to the nearby
farmhouse. Deeper in the valley, we
could see what looked like a very small
town. There it was: the Viking village.
Boys and wars
As we got closer, we could see that
this was very ambitious little Viking
town. It had the old longhouse, a lot of
smaller huts, and a huge man-made
rock formation in its centre. A small
lake sits alongside the village, and it
felt like we had travelled back through
the centuries. The village was very well
crafted and appeared that everything
was built from driftwood, making it
even more impressive.
“This is something,” I said to Hanna.
“Where are the boys?” she asked.
Second s later, we hea rd t hem
screaming like warriors from the top
of the wooden rampart.
“They’re at war,“ I replied.
Idea lost in the wild
Later, I learned that the village was
built to be the set of the movie “Vi-
kingr” that Universal Studios was going
Distance from
Reykjavík:
465km
Info:
Drive Route One
South. Turn right
before you go
into Almanna-
skarðsgöng.
The Village
That Never Was
A Blockbuster set that got lost in the wild
Words: Valur Grettisson Photos: Art Bicnick
Not a soul to be seen. Nor an A-list actor