Reykjavík is a quirky place; a fishing village posing as a city that is replete with colourful iron-clad homes lining residential cute streets. One can easily spend a day strolling around Reykjavík just soaking in the atmosphere of it all.
Like any other place, that atmosphere is created by the people who live here and the property owners who take care to paint their homes in candy colours, maintain their gardens and take pride in their neighbourhoods. But then there are property owners who don’t seem to give one single shit about their property, their neighbours or their neighbourhood. This article invites you on a walking tour of the homes owned by those people.
The Broken Clock
Klapparstígur 19 and Veghúsastígur 1
Today’s tour starts at whatever time you’d like at a building known locally as “The Broken Clock.” The squat white stone house on which the broken clock is mounted was built in 1879 and is the last remaining farmhouse standing in Reykjavík’s Skuggahverfi neighbourhood. It’s an adorable little building with oddly angular windows overlooking Klapparstígur and a twin gable roof that is full of charm.
Next door is another home, built in 1899, that is clad in black bárujárn (that wavy steel you’ll see on so many houses in Iceland), though it is more graffiti than black paint at this point.
Back in 2008, the owners of both houses combined the plots hoping to raze the whole lot, rezone it and erect one large building. But since the buildings are on Reykjavík’s list of protected heritage buildings, rezoning permission was never granted. They have left the buildings to deteriorate instead.
Þingholtsstræti 25
Take a stroll westward to continue your tour into Reykjavík’s charming Þingholt neighbourhood. I recommend walking along Laugavegur and hanging a left onto Þingholtsstræti so you can experience the transition of the street from more modern hotels to the fairy tale pastel coloured timber buildings that characterise this part of town. Your next stop is Þingholtsstræti 25, a magnificent two-storey timber and bárujárn clad home painted an odd shade of salmon orange set atop a stone basement foundation at the corner of Spítalastígur.
Unlike the first stop on the tour, glimpsing upon Þingholtsstræti 25 doesn’t immediately give the impression of a derelict home. It looks nice enough from the outside, really, but it’s entirely gutted inside. This is an historically significant home in Reykjavík, as it served as the city’s first hospital. In fact, the area that appears to be an unkempt checkerboard patterned patio in the back of the building is actually the flooring of the old morgue outbuilding.
Óðinsgata 14A and 14B
After peeping in some windows and daydreaming about renovating the old hospital, meander up Spítalastígur and veer right onto Óðinsgata. You won’t have a tough time figuring out the next stop on the tour — Óðinsgata 14A and 14B are the only properties on the street cordoned off by construction fencing. The two homes share a lot and once housed six lovely apartments that had undergone renovation just a year before being purchased in 2016 by an industrious investor hell bent on flipping the lot into a commercial guesthouse or hotel. Only, that stretch of Óðinsgata is zoned residential and the owner’s petitions to rezone the lot as commercial have been denied.
But instead of maintaining the properties as rental apartments to provide much-needed housing, the owner gutted the buildings, ripped out some windows, and left them unlocked to deteriorate. They’ve been fenced off for years now, an eyesore in an otherwise nice neighbourhood.
Njarðargata 35
Speaking of eyesores in otherwise nice neighbourhoods, a walk along Óðinsgata southwest will connect you to Nönnugata, which ends at Njarðargata. Turning left and continuing toward Hallgrímskirkja will bring you to a three-storey townhouse at number 35. This building, the property of serial slumlord Bergmann Magnús Bjarnason, has stood empty since 1991 and is known locally as draugahúsið (the haunted house).
The home’s exterior is characterised by the same chipped off-white paint that adorns the owner’s other properties, coupled with boarded up windows on the front door and a rust-eaten downspout. The interior, long empty, is crumbling.
Þórsgata 6
You’ll reach the final stop of today’s walking tour by continuing up Njarðargata and turning left onto Þórsgata. A few blocks down the road — one of several that make up Reykjavík’s “Neighbourhood of the Gods” — will deliver you to Þórsgata 6, an adorable bárujárn cottage set on a large treed lot. Built in 1920, this historically protected home measures just over 47 square metres and is one of only two properties on the street that is set back from the road on a green plot of land.
Though the owner of Þórsgata 6 bought the home in 2004 and receives regular offers from people interested in purchasing the property for restoration, he turns them all down, seemingly sore that the city won’t let him proceed with his wishes to tear the house down to erect a commercial guesthouse that fills the entirety of the 328 square metre lot. If you’re lucky during your tour, you’ll spot him on one of his visits with a worker to peel off another strip of steel siding in an effort to expedite the deterioration of the property so it is declared unsalvageable and he can raze it despite its historic status.
The end
That’s the end of the tour. Continue down Þórsgata to grab a drink in Bodega and take a moment to mull why, when Reykjavík is in the midst of a housing and affordability crisis, there is no will or ambition within city hall to wield the powers afforded to the city through the Lög um mannvirki (law on structures) to enforce upkeep through the imposition of penalties and fees and why petitions from neighbours fed up with having to live next to these derelict and potentially dangerous buildings seem to mean nothing. What gives, Reykjavík?
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