5 July, 2013

Leaving Patro we headed north after picking up some bread and chocolate milk. A quick detour into Talknafjörður to see the town, then over to Bildudalur, and out the road to Selárdalur.

Selárdalur has two attractions, the more visible and well known church and sculpture garden of Samuel Jónsson, where I'd been before, and the old house of "Gisli á Uppsölum", a relatively famous Icelandic hermit. A new book about his life had come out for Christmas, widely read, and Kata's mum was looking forward to this visit.

There's not much there, apparently most of the inside of the house went to the museum at Örlygshöfn, near Patreksfjörður, which we stopped at but didn't go in. The roof has been replaced and the windows are all new, which is apparently to preserve the house, but that's about it.

Personally I find the Samuel Jónsson museum to be worth the drive on it's own. We did also visit the church in the valley though, the church that refused to accept Samuel's altarpiece, leading to him building his own church to house it. His funeral was still held in the church though, and surprisingly, in the attic of the church, we found the wreaths and ribbons from his funeral as well as Gisli's. Quite odd. I guess no-one wanted to throw them out, and now there they hang, slowly decaying.

We drove back through Bildudalur, and continued onwards, learning more fjord names, on our way to a weekend in Þingeyri.

Footnote: The road out to Selárdalur was far far better than the last time I went, when Kata, Óli, Bjöggi and I wrecked the exhaust on the drive out.

Footnote 2: The altarpiece that Samuel built is now in the national gallery of course. The altarpiece the church already had is still right where it was.