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Click on the picture to watch this audio slideshow about bird watching at Óshólmar, an area at the mouth of Eyjafjardará river just outside Akureyri in north Iceland, the largest Icelandic town outside the capital region. Not many tourists know about this attraction, which is perfect for a walk in the sun.
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Located just 40 minutes by car and six minutes from Keflavík International Airport, Sandgerdi (“Sandy Hedge”) is a growing town of 1,700 with a storied history and loads to see. Read this special promotion about the hidden secrets of one of Iceland's most charming seaside villages.
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Museum of Sorcery & Witchcraft in west Iceland, where visitors can observe obscure magical objects and learn how to scotch ghosts, is steadily growing in popularity.
The Witchcraft Museum in Hólmavík, Strandir, opened in 2000. “The Strandir area has always been notorious for witchcraft and that sparked the idea of the museum,” Sigurdur Atlason told icelandreview.com. He is the manager of Strandagaldur, the company behind the museum’s exhibitions.
The Witchcraft Museum has gained popularity in recent years, last year it had 8,000 visitors. So far mostly Icelanders have visited the museum, but tourists are becoming increasingly interested.
“All the information is in Icelandic, English, German, French, and by next summer in Italian too,” Atlason says. He adds: “It is important to us that tourists from all nations can enjoy the exhibitions.”
In Hólmavík visitors can learn about the witch hunt in Iceland in the 17th century, take a look at magical objects on display and take part in scotching ghosts on special ghost days. The most popular object in the museum are the so-called necropants.
“Necropants are part of a complicated sorcery for gaining money,” Atlason explains. “The owner of necropants had to make a deal with a male friend while still alive about digging up his body after a natural cause of death, skinning it below the waste and wearing the skin as necropants.”
Atlason continues: “Then the necropants-owner would have to steal money from a poor widow and draw a magical symbol on a piece of parchment. After placing both in the necropants’ ‘pouch,’ the owner would magically come into possession of money.”
The original idea of the Witchcraft Museum was to spread the exhibitions out over the Strandir area. Apart from Hólmavík there is a magical exhibition in Bjarnafjördur fjord called the Sorcerer’s Cottage.
Two other exhibitions are planned: One in Trékyllisvík inlet, where sorcerers used to be burned alive, and another one in Hólmavík to be finished in 2011, comparing the witch hunt in Iceland and in the rest of Europe in the 17th century.
“In Iceland mostly men were accused of witchcraft, while in Europe mostly women were burned alive after being condemned as witches,” Altason says.
To read more about the Witchcraft Museum, visit www.galdrasyning.is.
A skeleton from a person who suffered from the Paget’s disease of bone was unearthed this week during an archeological excavation project at Skriduklaustur in east Iceland, where a monastery was once operated.
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The human being will be on display for the first time in its natural environment in the Reykjavík Family Park and Zoo next weekend. Visitors can observe three men and one woman in a cage after 10 am on Saturday and Sunday.
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The formal Videy island swim took place yesterday and there were three participants, two men and one woman, Thórdís Hrönn Pálsdóttir, who is the first woman to participate in the Videy swim since 1959.
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The Environment Agency intends to investigate whether the Heath Protection Authority handled the situation in Eskifjördur, east Iceland, in the correct manner when contaminated water from a trawler was carried into the town’s drinking water system.
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The second issue of the print edition of Iceland Review 2010 has just been published. Entitled “Under the Volcano” the magazine dedicates 20 pages, words and pictures, to the volcanic eruption in Eyjafjallajökull glacier which made headlines all over the word. New subscribers will receive the book Puffins as a gift and all subscribers are part of a draw to win a trip to Iceland. Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
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REVIEWS
Hendrikka Waage is an accomplished jewellery designer whose first children’s book Rikka and Her Magic Ring in Iceland, takes readers on an enchanted and educational journey through the country. It’s beautifully illustrated and a good lesson in geography, but the plot could have been better thought through and the moral of the story is a bit too prominent.
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On the third day of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption we drove from Skógar to Hvolsvöllur in total darkness, a distance of 18 kilometers. It was frightening, the darkness being so impenetrable that we could hardly see out the windows of the car. We could see faint lights from the farm standing right next to the highway.
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Ásmundur Sveinsson is among the foremost Icelandic sculptors. The current exhibition in the Ásmundur Sveinsson Museum in Reykjavík is entitled “I choose women who thrive…” and features women as symbols in the sculptor’s art. The works in the exhibition are selected from his entire career.
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