Four friends got together to open a new bar and encountered a haunting reality. No, we’re not talking about the renting prices for downtown. When they started getting the house ready for the opening of their new bar ‘Röntgen’, their sixth sense kicked in: a ghost came with the house. They open for business today—don’t get spooked out, pay them a visit.
A well-known face of the city’s restaurant and entertainment business, Jón Mýdral, got together with three friends to open a bar on Hverfisgata 12. The name of the bar comes from another piece of history that took place in the house. The word ‘Röntgen’ means ‘X-ray’ and Hverfisgata 12, where the bar will open, was where the first X-ray machine in the country was placed in.
“My friend Jón Oskar, an artist, sent me a message and congratulated me on the place. But it went along with the story that it did not fit well because it was a ghost, ” Jón told Visir.
The house was once a commune, and one of its inhabitants was the founder of the Icelandic Socialist Party, Gunnar Smári Egilsson, who was plagued by “a couple that was impossible and needed to get rid of”. Gunnar got Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson, the Head chieftain of the Ásatrú Society, to awake a ghost in the house to make the unwanted couple to leave. But they got caught in their own spooky web when the spirit decided to move in, too. Jón has since asked, unsuccessfully, for leaders of the pagan society and the Icelandic church to come and get rid of the unwanted tenant.
This is a year of celebration for Jón Mýdral, as he has now passed the one year mark in surviving a brain tumour. The opening party for Röntgen starts at 21:00 today in Hverfisgata 12.
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