A short bus ride east of the centre, Árbær is what you build when your city is too young to have a historic quarter and yet you do not want to lose the old wooden houses to redevelopment. About twenty buildings have been moved here from elsewhere in Reykjavik — a turf-roofed farmhouse, a smith's, a school, a row of corrugated-iron homes — and arranged as a small open-air village.
In summer the houses are staffed by costumed locals demonstrating dyeing, baking, blacksmithing, and the like, and farm animals wander a paddock at the back. In winter the museum is sleepier but the snow on the turf roofs is photogenic. Allow two hours; the cafe in the old shop does decent kleinur.