Eiriksstadir - Viking Longhouse
Eiriksstadir - Viking Longhouse is a landscape in West Iceland, Iceland — about 152 km from Reykjavik and reached by a drive to the trailhead and a short walk in (footwear and weather check). Shoot it during the summer window, when light, road status, and crowd levels line up for photography, then use the GPS coordinates, parking notes, and nearby waypoints below to fold this stop into a longer photography route.
Overview
Eiriksstadir - Viking Longhouse. Sit with us by the fire and listen to the historians tell ancient fiction stories of the Vikings. You can try out authentic Viking tools and learn about the know-how, architecture and clothing of the Vikings, all crafted using original tools and methods.
Planning more than one stop? Open the landscape GPS map for Iceland to put Eiriksstadir - Viking Longhouse on the same offline layer as everything nearby.
Notes on this location
Compiled from published sources rather than a visit. Sources are listed below.
The homestead of Erik the Red in Haukadalur. The building visitors see is a 1999 reconstruction standing about 100 m from the actual excavated ruins, which remain a protected archaeological site.
- Whose farm
- Eiríkr Þorvaldsson — Erik the Red
- The excavation
- Remains of two buildings of the 9th–10th centuries; the main longhouse about 50 m² and 14 m long, turf walls on rock foundations, with a central hearth
- What stands today
- A replica built in imitation of the excavated building using driftwood and replica tools; the museum was created in 1999 and opened in 2000
- The two sites
- The reconstruction stands about 100 m from the real ruins, which are protected
- Where
- Haukadalur valley, Dalasýsla
The distinction between the replica and the ruins is the point: a photograph of the longhouse is a photograph of a 1999 building, and captioning it as Erik the Red’s farm would be wrong by a thousand years. The genuine site is the low ground 100 m away and reads as almost nothing — which is the honest subject and the harder one. Turf walls on rock foundations also mean the reconstruction sits low and dark against the valley, so it needs sky or snow behind it rather than hillside.
SourcesEiríksstaðir — Wikipedia
Light & aurora at this spot
Calculated from this location’s coordinates (65.051, -21.533). Iceland stays on UTC year-round, so these are local times.
- Summer
- 21.9 h of daylight in June and the sun barely sets, dipping only 1.6° below the horizon — effectively continuous golden light through the small hours.
- Winter
- December: only 3.7 h of daylight (11:31–15:11), but the sun never climbs above 1.7° — the entire day is golden hour. Sunrise bears SSE, sunset SSW.
- Aurora
- Aurora-grade darkness Sep–Mar, peaking at 13 h a night in December. Not possible Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug — the sky never gets dark enough.
Bar height is daylight hours. Months marked • have enough astronomical darkness for aurora; the rest do not.
Questions & answers
Eiriksstadir - Viking Longhouse is a landscape in West Iceland, Iceland, approximately 152 km from Reykjavik. Exact GPS coordinates are included in the downloadable Landscape map.
The recommended season for Eiriksstadir - Viking Longhouse is Summer. For light, plan around blue hour and the first hour after sunrise; Iceland's long shoulder-season twilight extends usable conditions on either side.
Drive/Hike access. Bring weather-appropriate footwear and check conditions before setting out. The downloadable GPS map puts the waypoint on your phone; your own app routes you to it from wherever you are.
Eiriksstadir - Viking Longhouse is best visited during Summer. Outside that window, expect limited access, weather closures, or significantly different photographic conditions.