The Settlement Exhibition (Reykjavík 871±2)

Underground exhibition built around the foundations of a tenth-century Viking longhouse

Address Aðalstræti 16

Built into the basement of an unremarkable downtown block, the Settlement Exhibition is one of the more imaginative small museums in northern Europe. The centrepiece is the excavated foundation of a Viking longhouse from before 871 AD, displayed in situ under low lighting with projected reconstructions and interactive panels around it.

The exhibition does a careful, unhurried job of explaining the first hundred years of Reykjavik — the imports, the diet, the structure of the longhouse, the way the settlers found a hot spring (the "smoky bay" of the name) and built their farm next to it. Allow an hour.

things to do museum
A story
The longhouse on display was found during work for a new hotel in 2001. A wall fragment dated to before 871 — the year of a major volcanic ashfall layer that runs across south Iceland — suggesting that someone was already living on the spot a few decades before the official 'settlement' year of 874.

Other places in Things to Do