Near the heart of Reykjavík, beneath modern buildings and busy streets, lies the preserved core of the city’s earliest known house. The Settlement Exhibition (Landnámssýningin) at Aðalstræti 16 stands as a window into the era when the first Norse settlers established their lives in Iceland.
A city’s origins uncovered
The foundation of the exhibition is a Viking Age hall, excavated in 2001, that was inhabited between roughly 930 and 1000 CE. This structure is among Iceland’s oldest known human-made remains. Displayed exactly where they were discovered, these walls and hearth tell the story of those who built a home in what is now downtown Reykjavík.
To the north of the hall, archaeologists also uncovered an ancient turf wall. Its age was confirmed through a distinctive layer of volcanic ash dropped by an eruption from Torfajökull around 871 CE, give or take two years. This specific marker has made it possible to tie the area’s first habitation to a precise period nearly 1,150 years ago.
History beneath the city
The exhibition is not limited to a single structure. Excavations have turned up artefacts scattered around central Reykjavík and on the island of Viðey, each piece revealing more about daily life and work during the first generations of settlement. The volcanic ash layer has helped archaeologists track what existed in Reykjavík in the earliest centuries after humans arrived in Iceland.
Long before Reykjavík’s present-day streets took shape, the area was rural land divided by gravel ridges between Lake Tjörnin and the sea. The names of those who lived here more than a millennium ago remain unknown. Yet their presence endures in the preserved remains beneath the city. The stories of Ingólfur Arnarson, the settler said to have chosen this place to farm, and his family echo through the findings and are interwoven with Iceland’s oldest texts.
The Settlement Exhibition brings together expertise from archaeologists, conservators, designers, and international specialists. The display relies on modern technology to make archaeological sites accessible, blending the old with the new in a way that places viewers directly inside the physical beginning of Reykjavík.
