An exhibition of the country’s longest scarf will open at Reykjavík City Hall on Monday. The scarf is almost 11.5 kilometers long (17 kilometers when stretched out) and was knitted to connect the towns Ólafsfjördur and Siglufjördur of Fjallabyggd municipality in north Iceland “with warmth” when a new tunnel opened there last autumn.
Frída Björk Gylfadóttir with her scarves. Photo by Tina Bauer.
“It is amazing to see it all in once piece,” the scarf project’s initiator, Frída Björk Gylfadóttir, an artist and banker from Siglufjördur, told Morgunbladid.
It was knitted in sections by more than 1,400 people, ages ten to 94, and then the pieces were sown together. Scarves were sent in from all over the country and abroad. There was no competition among the knitters, but one woman knitted almost 400 meters.
The scarf has been on display in the new culture center Hof in Akureyri since November but has now been squeezed into a 20-foot container and moved to Reykjavík. It will be on display in the City Hall’s eastern exhibition hall from January 10 to 22.
After the exhibition in Reykjavík City Hall, the scarf will be divided into its individual parts again, each piece given a number and marked with Fjallabyggd and then sold for charity.
Click here to read more about the scarf project.
