Reykjavik

Image

The House Full of History: Höfði House

Not far from the sea wall and a short walk from the historic old town Reykjavik is a white two story house that sits alone among a sea of green grass.

The house looks like it belongs to a member of Reykjavik’s upper middle class but it is actually much, much more than this.

It hard not to love a nation that erects a statue to a poet (politicians already have too many airports named after them). This is just to he north of Höfði House and statue represents poet Einar Benediktsson standing in front of a harp.

The house was built in 1909 as the French Consulate. It later was the home of a poet and then a painter. During the 1940s and 50s it was the British Embassy.

The front of the Höfði House.

In 1958, the city of Reykjavik purchased the house and restored it and since then, the house has been used for formal receptions and diplomatic meetings.

This house is really famous for a meeting that took place here in October of 1986 between Mickhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan. This meeting is regarded as the beginning of the end of the Cold War.

And like all good houses full of history, it is rumored to be haunted.

For my sketch, I sat on the sea wall and sketched the back of the house where the windows look out to the waters of Faxaflói Bay, while overhead black-headed gulls and fulmars flew by.

Image

The Whales of Iceland

Whales are some of the most amazing creatures that have ever lived on planet Earth. And one Reykjavik site that really piqued my interest was Whales of Iceland!

This museum is housed in a massive warehouse near the harbor and includes life sized models of all the dolphins, porpoises, and whales found off the shores of Iceland.

This really is a sketcher’s paradise and I found a bench located against a wall and I started to sketch the humpback, blue, and right whales that were suspended from the ceiling.

I was interrupted in mid-sketch, by a Yank (yes there are Yanks working in Iceland!) who informed me that I was not sitting on a bench but on a child’s coloring table and I was about to break it! Opps, so I found a chair and finished the sketch (featured sketch).

A small child provides scale to how large these whales really are. Perhaps she is headed towards the coloring/sketching table/bench.

It was really interesting to see the true sizes of the whales compared to others. I had seen a handful of blue whales off the California coast but you only see small parts of the dorsal side and if you’re lucky, the fluke. Here you could see the entirety of the whales. I was impressive to see just how large the largest animal that ever lived on the earth really is!

For my second sketch I drew the bowhead whale, the whale was so large that it did not fit into the pages of my sketchbook.

The eye of the largest animal on earth: the blue whale.
Image

Hallgrimskirkja

Hallgrimskirkja dominates the skyline of Reykjavik, Iceland. It’s the first thing you see as you head into the city from the airport. For many years it was the tallest building in the entire country. It’s design mimics the basalt columns found across the geology of Iceland. This Lutheran church is essentially Icelandic.

At first I thought this was some modern art but I soon realized it was really just a bicycle chained to the top of a light post, with Iceland’s largest church in the background.

Hallgrimskirkja is the largest church in Iceland. It was designed in 1945 but it was not completed until 1986. This gives hope to the continuous mass that is Barcelona’s unfinished Gaudi masterpiece La Sagrada Familia. It will be finished, someday.

This church topped my sketch list for Reykjavik. I love to sketch architecture. It is the best way to get to know a building and I sketched Hallgrimskirkja from a few different angles and perspectives. It is a building that holds up to many sketches. Here’s one:

While in Reykjavik, my apartment was a block and a half from Hallgrimskirkja, so it was easy to wander back to my home base. All I had to do was look for the tall spire, like a beacon announcing my Icelandic digs and wander towards it. It worked every time.

The church changes with the weather, from overcast to Icelandic sun.

One sketch I did was from a children’s playground at Njalsgata (half a block from my digs). The sketch was dominated by the tall spire of Hallgrimskirkja and in the foreground was my local coffee shop, Reykjavik Roasters. Here I enjoyed an double cappuccino and a blueberry muffin. Coffee in Europe always seems so much better. Perhaps it’s the porcelain. Perhaps it’s the view, perhaps it’s the knowledge of being somewhere exciting and new.