A house with a history
Garðakot was built in 1931 and then extended in 1961 when it was doubled in size.
Þorsteinn Bjarnason and Sigurlín Erlendsdóttir lived there with their 8 kids.
Two of them, Guðjón and Óskar, took over the farm from their parents in 1970 and continued to live there and take care of the farm until they were old men.
Guðjón, who lived in the house for the majority of his life, was an extraordinary man with a lot of character. He was very fond of his house and by restoring it we wanted to honour his memory.
Guðjón was very funny man, with a lot of humour. He was also a conservationist and was one of the men behind the protection of Dyrhólaey, which was declared a nature reservation in 1978.
Dyrhólaey used to be an untouched paradise, but around 1970 there was talk of creating the road leading up to the island. Guðjón was not a huge supporter of this, but being the humourist he was he nicknamed the road "Hugsjónargranda" which translates to "The destructor of visionaries", as before the road Dyrhólaey was an untouched paradise, an island where wildelife alone roamed freely. He clearly felt that it should be kept untouched and unspoilt, withouth the human traffic to disturb it all
Guðjón and Óskar never got married, but were well looked after by their sisters.
They came sometimes for weeks at a time, and cleaned the whole house and filled the freezer with baked delacacies for the brothers.
Then when guests came to visit the brothers, the frozen cakes and rolled up crepe was brought out from the freezer and served with coffee or milk, or as Guðjón called it, "glæra" and "strept"
When Óskar became too old to take care of the farm Guðjón decided to move to a neighbouring farm which was smaller with his sheep and loyal dog Gái.
Eva and Vigfús decided to buy the land and all the houses with it in 2005 and built themselves their own house to live in
In 2012 Guðjón and Óskar's house was completely renovated and changed into the guesthouse it is today.
Guðjón, the younger brother, was favoured by many photographers in his older years and his face appeared on many book covers and in advertisement.
One of Iceland’s best known photographers, RAX, became a good friend of Guðjón and took numerous portrait photographs of him.
All copyright belongs to RAX, for more details on his work go to his website: www.rax.is
