Minjasafnið á Bustarfelli
Minjasafnið á Bustarfelli is a landscape in East Iceland, Iceland — about 592 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
In the beautiful valley, Hofsárdalur stands the old family center of Bustarfell. This turf town, with its buildings with red rods and grassy rooftops, is one of the oldest and best-preserved farms of its kind in the country.
Planning more than one stop? Open the landscape GPS map for Iceland to put Minjasafnið á Bustarfelli on the same offline layer as everything nearby.
Notes on this location
Compiled from published sources rather than a visit. Sources are listed below.
A turf farm museum in Vopnafjörður. Parts of it survive from the rebuilding after a great fire in 1770, though the National Museum notes that the age of individual buildings cannot be determined with certainty.
- Age
- Some parts remain from the rebuilding after a fire in 1770; the exact age of individual buildings is not determinable with certainty
- The collection
- Assembled by Methúsalem Methúsalemsson (1889–1969), a farmer here; his daughter Elín Methúsalemsdóttir gave it to the people of Vopnafjörður for conservation in 1982
- Status
- Part of the National Museum of Iceland’s House Collection; the museum is inside the turf farmhouse
- Not all turf
- Three small concrete structures were added in 1944 — a kitchen, a heating compartment and a lavatory — with central heating and electricity from a generator
- Where
- Vopnafjörður, east Iceland
The 1944 concrete is the useful detail and the one no romantic description mentions: this is a turf farm with twentieth-century additions built into it, so a frame chosen to read as pre-industrial has to be composed around them rather than assumed. Being a museum inside the farmhouse also means the interior is the exhibit, and interiors here are lit by small turf-house windows.
SourcesBustarfell in Vopnafjörður — National Museum of Iceland
Light & aurora at this spot
Calculated from this location’s coordinates (65.616, -15.099). Iceland stays on UTC year-round, so these are local times.
- Summer
- 22.9 h of daylight in June and the sun barely sets, dipping only 1.1° below the horizon — effectively continuous golden light through the small hours.
- Winter
- December: only 3.3 h of daylight (11:18–14:33), but the sun never climbs above 1.1° — 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
Minjasafnið á Bustarfelli is a landscape in East Iceland, Iceland, approximately 592 km from Reykjavik. Exact GPS coordinates are included in the downloadable Landscape map.
The recommended season for Minjasafnið á Bustarfelli 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.
Minjasafnið á Bustarfelli is best visited during Summer. Outside that window, expect limited access, weather closures, or significantly different photographic conditions.