Hafnarborg is open as usual, until Christmas, everyday except Tuesdays, 12–5 p.m. The opening hours during the holidays are as follows:

December 23rd: open 12–5 p.m.
Christmas Eve: closed
Christmas Day: closed
December 26th: closed
December 27th: open 12–5 p.m.
December 28th: closed
December 29th: open 12–5 p.m.
December 30th: open 12–5 p.m.
New Year‘s Eve: closed
New Year‘s Day: closed

Please note that the office of Hafnarborg will be closed during the holidays. Regular opening hours will resume from January 2nd. Entry is free and everyone welcome.

They Yulitide Lads mobile Spoon-Licker is now available at our shop. The mobile is designed by design team Arnar&Arnar and the ornament comes with a poem composed by Kristín Svava Tómasdóttir. Spoon-Licker is the last Yule Lad in the Yuletide Lads series by the Benefit Society for Children with Disabilities, having presented sixteen ornaments in the series. The series then includes the thirteen Icelandic Yule Lads and their parents Grýla and Leppalúði, as well as the Yule Cat.

A host of the nation‘s most accomplished designers and poets have joined forces with the Benefit Society in order to bring their interpretation of these characters to life. Candle-Stealer was first in the series, having been made available for purchase before Christmas 2003.

Hafnarborg has long been among the sellers of the Yuletide Lads and the Globe of Goodwill, but due to delays in the manufacturing and shipping process of the Globe, it will be available a few days later than normal. The Globe of Goodwill will thus be available for purchase from December 9th until December 23rd. All proceeds from the sale of the Globe of Goodwill and the Yuletide Lads go to the Benefit Society for Children with Disabilities.

The Yuletide Lads mobile, presented as a limited edition, will be available at our shop from December 2nd until December 16th.

Hafnarborg is counting down the days till Christmas by showing the Icelandic Christmas calendar Hvar er Völundur?  (Where is Völundur?) between 4 and 5 p.m. during the holiday season.

The television series was produced by RÚV in 1996 and has become a holiday classic. In the series, Felix and Gunni look for the toymaker Völundur who makes all the best Christmas gifts. During the search, the two get into a lot of adventures, as they get closer and closer to Völundur.

The creator of the series is artist Þorvaldur Þorsteinsson, whose works are now on view at the museum as a part of a retrospective exhibition.

Families with children are especially invited to attend the screenings, but each episode of the series will be shown on repeat between 4 and 5 p.m. each day. Since the museum is closed on Tuesdays, two episodes will however be shown on Wednesdays. Entry to the museum is free, as always.

Is your name María? Do you live in Hafnarfjörður? Would you like to take part in an artwork?

At this time, Hafnarborg is working on a retrospective of works by artist Þorvaldur Þorsteinsson (1960-2013), called Long Are the Trials of Man. At this exhibition, one of the artist‘s works, Images of Mary will be recreated, but Þorvaldur first exhibited said work at a show in the Akureyri Art Museum in 1996. The upcoming exhibition at Hafnarborg is set to open on Þorvaldur‘s birthday, November 7th.

Images of Mary is an artwork which calls for participation, as the artist made a request for pictures on loan from anyone named María, living in Akureyri. The pictures he subsequently exhibited together in one space of the museum, under soft lighting and an air of holiness. In this way, he made a reference to sacred images of Mary, with an equal mix of the holy and the homely.

Hafnarborg now makes a similar request, asking all those named María (or Mary etc.), living in Hafnarfjörður, to lend the museum pictures of themselves to exhibit at this upcoming retrospective. The picture can be a passport photo or a larger photograph, a phone selfie or a picture from the family photo album, drawing or a painting, if available, a portrait or a wide shot, according to preference. The size or age of the image is also not important, with variety being seen as optimal.

The picture can either be delivered to the front desk of the museum, during opening hours, or sent via email to [email protected], including information about the full name and phone number of the lender. Pictures can be turned in until October 10th. After the exhibition has come to an end, participants will be able to get their pictures back at the front desk of the museum.

If you are interested but have some questions, please contact us via telephone at 585 5790.

Tónagull is a research-based music workshop, based on many years of practice and created especially for children belonging to the youngest age group, as well as their parents. Since September 2019, workshops have also been held regularly in Polish with much success. In collaboration with Hafnarfjörður and Hafnarborg, it is now also available to Polish families living in Hafnafjörður, but the first music workshops in Polish took place at the museum in spring 2020.

The workshops will be held once a week at Hafnarborg – every Sunday at 12 p.m., from September 19th – in a form resembling a musical game, which both children and their guardians can enjoy. These music workshops are tailored to the needs of children aged 8-10 months, but both younger and older participants (up to 3 years old) will be able to enjoy the classes by discovering the world through sounds.

The first Tónagull workshop took place in January 2004 and the meetings have been enjoying increasing popularity ever since. The positive reception of the workshops is also evidenced by the fact that parents participating in the meetings often come back again when new children appear in their lives. The method was developed by Helga Rut Guðmundsdóttir, lecturer at the University of Iceland.

During the classes, we will work:

• in Polish
• based on popular children’s songs and original compositions

We will also use a specially prepared set of simple, child-safe musical instruments. You don’t need to have any musical preparation to participate in the workshops. The teacher in charge of the workshops will guide the participants step by step through the entire structure of the classes with the help of subsequent musical games. Here you can find the website of the workshop in Polish.

Come and see for yourself how enriching it is to make music together. The participation fee for each class is only 500 ISK. Please click here to sign up.

Tónagull – warsztaty dla rodziców z dziećmi w wieku 0-3
Niedzielę o godz. 12, w Hafnarborg

Tónagull to oparta o wieloletnią praktykę metoda warsztatów muzycznych utworzona specjalnie z myślą o dzieciach należących do najmłodszej grupy wiekowej i ich rodzicach. Od września 2019 spotkania w języku polskim odbywają się regularnie w Reykjaviku i cieszą się ogromną popularnością. Dzięki wsparciu miasta Hafnarfjörður oraz centrum sztuki Hafnarborg teraz dostępna będzie także dla polskich rodzin mieszkających w Hafnafjörður.

Spotkania będą się odbywać – w każdą niedzielę o godz. 12, począwszy od 19 września – a ich forma przypomina muzyczną zabawę, z której radość czerpią zarówno dzieci, jak i ich opiekunowie. Warsztaty znakomicie odpowiadają na potrzeby dzieci w wieku 8-10 miesięcy, jednak zarówno młodsi, jak i starsi uczestnicy (do ok. 3 roku życia) będą w równym stopniu cieszyć się przebiegiem zajęć odkrywając świat za pomocą dźwięków.

Pierwsze warsztaty Tónagull odbyły się w styczniu 2004 i od tamtej pory spotkania cieszą się wciąż rosnącą popularnością. O pozytywnym odbiorze warsztatów świadczy także fakt, że rodzice uczestniczący w spotkaniach często wracają kolejny raz, kiedy w ich życiu pojawiają się nowe pociechy. Metoda opracowana została przez Helgę Rut Guðmundsdóttir, wykładowczynię na Uniwersytecie Islandzkim.

Na zajęciach pracować będziemy:

• w języku polskim
• w oparciu o popularne piosenki dziecięce oraz oryginalne kompozycje

Będziemy także korzystać ze specjalnie przygotowanego zestawu prostych, bezpiecznych dla dzieci instrumentów muzycznych. Aby uczestniczyć w warsztatach nie musisz mieć żadnego przygotowania muzycznego! Kierujący warsztatami pedagog przeprowadzi uczestników krok po kroku przez całą strukturę zajęć za pomocą kolejnych muzycznych zabaw. Zapraszamy na stronę internetową warsztatów po polsku.

Przyjdź, aby przekonać się jak niezwykle wzbogacającym doświadczeniem jest wspólne muzykowanie. Koszt jednych zajęć wynosi tylko 500 ISK. Kliknij tutaj by się zapisać.

Are you interested in the Hafnarborg programme? Would you like to receive notifications about exhibitions, events and other happenings at the museum? Is your email address perhaps not already on our mailing list?

If so, we encourage you to sign up for our newsletter by entering your email address into the newsletter field at the bottom of the home page to be informed about our programme.

See you at Hafnarborg.

Artist Gígja Jónsdóttir reaches out to the public for tears for her work in the group exhibition Community of Sentient Beings, on view at Hafnarborg from August 28th until October 31st 2021.

Teargivers will be sent a vial to collect their tears, which they then pour into a well of tears at the museum, at any time during the exhibition period.

If you want to contribute your tears, please contact the artist with information of your full name, address and phone number via email to [email protected].

Now is your last chance to see Arnfinnur Amazeen‘s exhibition, Discotheque, which has been on view at the museum this summer, but the exhibition is set to end on Sunday August 15th. So we encourage you all to lace up your boots – either with or without plastic bags – before visiting Hafnarborg to experience the artist‘s special discotheque. The curator of the exhibition is H.K. Rannversson.

At the exhibition, the artist presents new works, drawing inspiration from the ambiguous imagery of Icelandic night club culture in the seventies and eighties. While the title makes a reference to revelry, what we have here is nonetheless a rather dreary discotheque, no glitz and no glamour. Only the resounding silence of a noisy past.

The museum is open all days, except Tuesdays, 12-5 p.m. and entry is free, as always.

The Free Feeling project and the Terra Incognita cartoon exhibition of Slovak and Icelandic authors aims to bring this untraditional art to people in both countries. Cartoons certainly represent a universal language, being a probe to human thinking that responds to both the inner world of the authors and external influences.

Last year, five exhibitions of the participants’ works were displayed in Slovakia at cultural events, festivals and workshops. Icelandic audiences now get the chance to view the exhibition and appreciate the works of two Icelandic and two Slovak cartoonists: Elín Elísabet Einarsdóttir, Fero Jablonovský, Hugleikur Dagsson and Bobo Pernecký.

The exhibition is located in Hafnarborg’s Apótek gallery, on the ground floor of the museum, and is open to guests during regular opening hours of the museum.

The Hafnarborg Songfest will take place for the fifth time from June 19th until July 4th 2021.

The Songfest will feature a great number of excellent musicians, as well as a diverse programme. The Perseverence that has helped us all make it through the difficult pandemic is this year’s theme. Music and poetry convey shared human emotion across time and borders, helping us understand ourselves and find connections with others, inspiring and teaching us to appreciate the beautiful things in life, in hope of better times ahead.

This year’s programme, including information about courses, concerts and performers can be found at www.songhatid.com.

The artistic directors and founders of the Hafnarborg Songfest are Guðrún Jóhanna Ólafsdóttir and Francisco Javier Jáuregui.