Traditional Icelandic craftsmanship is being taught again in Hafnir, a small settlement on the Reykjanes Peninsula, where participants are using stone, driftwood and centuries-old construction methods to rebuild structures on their historical foundations. The courses organised by the Fornverk í Höfnum project aim to preserve not only old buildings, but also the practical knowledge required to understand and restore them.
Rebuilding on the remains of older structures
The project began after local farmer Sveinn Enok Jóhannsson struggled to find time to attend a traditional stonework course in Skagafjörður, in northern Iceland. He decided to bring similar training to Hafnir, an area marked by old stone walls, collapsed ruins and traces of earlier settlements.
During the courses, students do not work on artificial reconstructions detached from their surroundings. They are rebuilding structures where previous buildings once stood, using physical remains and historical records to guide the work.
According to RÚV, participants have been reconstructing a sheep enclosure beside Réttavegur and erecting timber frames inside the remains of a fishermen’s hut and what was probably a workshop. The locations were identified with the help of farm maps dating from 1918.
The project has received support from the Suðurnes Regional Development Fund (Uppbyggingarsjóður Suðurnesja), the Landsbankinn Community Fund (Samfélagssjóður Landsbankans) and the Historic Buildings Preservation Fund managed by the Cultural Heritage Agency of Iceland (Minjastofnun Íslands).
Traditional Icelandic craftsmanship starts with the material
One of the courses focuses on traditional timber framing, or grindarsmíði. Participants learn how to examine the form and qualities of each piece of wood before deciding how it should be used.
The timber collected around Hafnir is driftwood, historically an important resource in an island with limited native woodland. However, relatively little new wood now washes ashore in the area. Much of the available material has therefore been lying outdoors for years and requires extensive preparation.
Suitable logs are split, hewn into square posts and joined using traditional timber connections. Students make wooden joints and mortises, cut the material with large hand saws and finally assemble the load-bearing frame.
The course description published by IÐAN education centre presents timber, stone and landscape as parts of the same structure. Participants are taught how to build frames that are strong but also respond to the historical and environmental context in which they stand.
Why old buildings need old skills
The timber-framing courses are led by Snædís Traustadóttir, a master carpenter who specialises in historic buildings. She learned some of the techniques from her father and grandfather, who were also master carpenters, before studying traditional building craftsmanship in Norway.
Traustadóttir told RÚV that Icelandic architecture combines influences found elsewhere in the Nordic region, while its underlying craft has much in common with Norwegian traditions.
The courses are open both to professional carpenters and to participants with no previous construction experience. Their purpose is partly educational, but they also address a practical problem for heritage conservation: historic structures cannot be maintained correctly when knowledge of their original construction disappears.
In an article published by IÐAN, Traustadóttir explains that every old building carries a distinctive “fingerprint” created by its materials, tools and construction methods. Applying modern techniques without understanding that fingerprint can remove the characteristics that make the building historically significant.
The same principle applies to stonework. Courses held in Hafnir teach participants to read the shape of the stone, the surrounding landscape and the historical context before rebuilding walls and ruins. The work therefore requires observation and interpretation as much as physical strength.
A wider effort to keep building traditions alive
Fornverk is part of a broader effort to preserve traditional construction knowledge in Iceland. The Heritage Craft School (Fornverkaskólinn) in Skagafjörður, founded in 2006, has trained professionals and enthusiasts in turf and stone building, timber framing and driftwood processing.
These methods reflect how Icelandic communities adapted construction to the materials available around them. Stone provided foundations and walls, turf offered insulation, and scarce timber was reused carefully in internal frames and roofs.
The courses in Hafnir show why protecting this heritage cannot be limited to preserving completed buildings as static objects. Walls, frames and turf structures require maintenance and periodic rebuilding. Their survival consequently depends on people who can still select the materials, recognise the joints and reproduce the gestures through which they were originally made.
In Hafnir, conservation begins with rebuilding a wall or raising a wooden frame. Its longer-term purpose is to ensure that the knowledge embodied in Iceland’s historic landscape does not disappear before the structures themselves.
