This beautiful little turf church is in the southeast coast of Iceland near the village of Hof. There are only six turf churches left in the country and we got a chance to see two of them on our last trip to Iceland. As you might have noticed, there are graves all around the church courtyard which are the small mounds in the foreground of this photo. None of them have grave headstones or markers, but I assume they have records of who is buried where around the church.
Nýji Bær in Hólar
While MJ and I were in Iceland, we kept our eyes open for turf houses. While doing our research prior to the trip, we learned that these were common in Iceland back in the old days due to their ability to protect their owners during the tough winters. We saw a few of them during the week, but we didn’t see any up close. On the 4th day, MJ found a little town on the map called Hólar. Hólar is a very small village on the north side of the country with a cool church, two turf houses, a small university and a few small buildings. The university is contained within one office building. If I had to guess, the entire town probably had 30 people total. Well, the larger turf house is called Nýji Bær and is rather large. Back when it was created, it was probably made to hold 2 or 3 families. There were a number of different rooms in groups almost like different suites. It was the largest turf house we saw all week. I’d love to go back and check it out again some day.
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