The country house of Halldór Laxness, Iceland's only Nobel Prize-winning writer, sits in the Mosfellsdalur valley a few minutes' drive east of the town centre. The modernist white villa with its garden of birch trees was both home and writing studio from 1945 until his death in 1998. Auður Laxness, his widow, donated it to the state in 2002 and it opened as a museum two years later, kept almost exactly as it was the day they lived in it.
Inside you see the family's furniture, the paintings on the walls, the well-stocked library and a music room dominated by a Steinway grand. An audio guide narrates the rooms in Laxness's own voice (from old radio recordings) and walks you through the writing of his major novels. The museum is small but rewarding even for visitors who have never read a word of Laxness — it is one of the most personal writer's houses in Europe.