I Am a Polar Bear

This is the last of the Iceland content for a month or so! Today I’m taking you to Reykjavík’s Saga Museum, which I should have visited years ago. It’s sponsored the official city map for at least as long as I’ve been going, which surely makes it Iceland’s most prominent museum/indoor attraction and yet…

I think it used to be in downtown Reykjavík. It had a stint in one of Perlan’s empty water tanks, before the current Wonders of Iceland exhibition moved in and its now across the Old Harbour at Grandi, in a nice white building that seems to sell itself more as a restaurant, although it does have the words SAGA MUSEUM across it in big letters. It’s a great place to hide from a snowstorm… and in my usual organised way, I don’t have a photo of the outside of it because it was far too snowy to risk damaging a brand new camera – small cameras with big zooms don’t take kindly to snowflakes.

Inside, you pay for your entry, obviously. Then you can leave your coat on the rails or you can borrow a locker, with a big obnoxious keyring to make sure you don’t walk off with it. When you’re ready, you’re given an audioguide and in you go. Seventeen scenes from history and saga are displayed using wax figures, scenery and sound and your audioguide explains what you’re seeing. Scenes range from the pre-Settlement monks to the Reformation, via Snorri Sturluson, “Lucky” Leifur Eiriksson, the coming of Christianity and witch trials. If you want to see the first several hundred years of Iceland’s history in under an hour, this is a very good place to do it. One of the figures even rocks back and forth in a way that made me wonder if maybe a bored employee had replaced it to freak out the customers. It doesn’t shy away from the gory moments, either. There are at least two “dead” bodies in here and a woman being burned at the stake – sorry, just realised “there are at least two dead bodies in here” implies that there are actual human corpses. There are not, they’re wax like the “living” ones.

I did chuckle a bit at Ingólfur Arnarsson, revered first official settler, because he evidently has the same barber as Boris Johnson. I was most taken by Raven-Floki, whose petulance gave the country its name (“I’m naming this Odin-forsaken place Ice-land and I’m going home!” A little paraphrased but otherwise accurate). I was interested to learn that a name I’ve seen several times in sagas, Kjartan, is apparently actually an Irish name – confirmed by a lawyer who loves the sound of his own voice in a bar that evening, by pure coincidence – my friendly local Irishman was delving into Iceland and Ireland’s shared history and we were both learning that there’s more Irish in the Icelandic language than either of us had realised. Back from the bar and in the cold light of day, I looked up the gentleman. Kjartan is the Iceland-isation of the Irish name Muircheartach, Mael Curcaigh, “servant of Curcach” so I was kind of right that Kjartan doesn’t sound very Irish.

I enjoyed the Saga Museum. I was sorry it had taken so long to visit but also grateful because it provided entertaining shelter from the snow. But, to be completely honest, my favourite bit came after the exhibition.

Next to the rails and lockers is a curtained room containing a box of chain mail, a table of helmets, a rail of clothing and a rack of weapons, all underneath a sign asking if you’d like to try them on and see if you’re a true Viking. Yes, please. I tried the mail but I couldn’t get it out of the box. I don’t know if it was too heavy; there were instructions for putting it on because it weighs so much but for me to not even be able to haul it out of the box with both hands made me wonder if the problem was that its rings had caught on something. I gave up on it and found a wonderful long red tunic on the rails. I already had Viking-style long red plaits so I forewent a helmet and went straight for a sword. Oh, I could wield a sword!

Next I found a long brown dress, which was prettier than the phrase “long brown dress” might suggest. Gorgeous thing. I tried to put a red pinafore over it but it didn’t fit and the shape of the top didn’t make sense anyway so I opted for a green one. Then, for some variety, I added an axe. That was fun too! Somewhere in the garage I have a mattock I inherited from my grandad. It’s a kind of garden tool but it’s also a gigantic axe about four feet high with a massive wooden handle. Think Dwarven battleaxe. It’s what I’ll use come the zombie apocalypse and someone like Þorfinn Skull-Splitter would probably have been proud of it. I could have happily smuggled that brown dress out and taken it home to wear with my own giant axe. It was comfortable, it was sleek in a billowy oversized way and I thought it looked great.

And last, the gift shop. I mention this only because it didn’t sell exactly the same tourist tat as every other gift shop. It had copies of several of the sagas, as you’d expect. It had wooden weapons and helmets. Lots of jewellery, including brass beard beads and make-your-own glass bead strings for the front of your pinafore. I lingered over some earrings but what I finally settled on was a frosted glass ring. I’m sure no Icelander in its entire history, let alone the sword-wielding early ones, has ever worn a bright blue frosted glass thumb ring but I’m trying to expand my ring collection and I liked it.

So that was my time at the Saga Museum. A serving of visual history and a delicious side of dressing up. 10/10, would dress up again.