Westfjords Heritage Museum

Maritime heritage of the Westfjords, housed in an 18th-century timber warehouse

The Byggdasafn Vestfjarda occupies the Turnhús, a tar-blackened timber warehouse built in 1784 to store cod and fish oil. Inside, the collection traces the maritime life of the Westfjords through ship models, fishing gear, the equipment of a 19th-century herring station, and an extensive accordion museum upstairs (the curator was a passionate collector).

The complex includes three other 18th-century timber buildings — the Krambúð, Faktorshús, and Tjöruhús — clustered around the harbour and forming the most complete collection of old Icelandic urban architecture anywhere outside Reykjavik's Aðalstræti. A cafe in the courtyard serves coffee and waffles in summer.

things to do museum
A story
The museum's Turnhús building, built in 1784, is one of the four oldest surviving timber houses in Iceland — all four of them clustered here on the Isafjordur spit. The cluster survived because the harbour stayed economically active when many fishing villages were abandoned in the 20th century, and because demolishing them was always cheaper to defer than to do.