Hafnarborg strives to open up the world of art to everyone by offering guided tours for all audiences and all ages. To that end, Viewpoints is a new senior visitors programme, for those interested in arts and culture, looking to get a deeper insight into what is happening at Hafnarborg, either by focusing on current exhibitions or by examining individual works in the museum collection.

The events will allow guests the opportunity to approach art through a variety of means, in discussion with museum experts. At the end of the meeting, we invite visitors to sit down for a chat over coffee and snacks, provided by Hafnarborg.

The programme will centre on a special subject during each visit, set to take place on Wednesdays, once a month, from 2-3 p.m. To ensure that everyone can enjoy the programme, there is a limit of 25 guests during the visit.

Spring Programme:

March 16th at 2 p.m.
The Icelandic Photo Festival – Hallgerður Hallgrímsdóttir

A guided tour of Hallgerður Hallgrímsdóttir’s exhibition, A Few Thoughts on Photography – Vol. III. Hallgerður utilizes the various possibilities of the medium, photography, to better understand its technique and history. The exhibition is a part of the programme of The Icelandic Photo Festival.

April 13th at 2 p.m.
Works from the Collection

The Hafnarborg Collection currently counts nearly 1600 works in a wide range of media. This includes painting, drawing, sculptures and video works, as well as the Hafnarfjörður’s public art collection, which is under the care of Hafnarborg. The visit will centre on select works from the museum collection.

May 11th at 2 p.m.
DesignMarch – Tinna Gunnarsdóttir

A guided tour of  Tinna Gunnarsdóttir’s exhibition, Touching Landscape. The works displayed are part of Tinna’s ongoing doctoral research project in Héðinsfjörður in Northern Iceland, where she reflects on the relationship between man and nature through various design methods. The exhibition is a part of DesignMarch 2022.

Guests can register for the visits via telphone at +354 585 5790 or via email at [email protected].

Free entry.

Hafnarborg wishes its friends and supporters a very happy Easter. Opening hours during the holidays are as follows:

Maundy Thursday April 14th
Open 12 p.m.–5 p.m.

Good Friday April 15th
Closed

Holy Saturday April 16th
Open 12 p.m.–5 p.m.

Easter Sunday April 17th
Closed

Easter Monday April 18th
Open 12 p.m.–5 p.m.

The Globe of Goodwill 2021 is sold out at our museum shop, as in many places in the Great Reykjavík Area. Some places may still have a few pieces left, but we recommend calling ahead to make sure that the Globe is still in stock.

A list of places selling the Globe can be found here.

The Art Council of Hafnarborg has selected high tide – low tide as the autumn exhibition of the year 2022, from the proposals that were submitted at the end of last year, but the winning proposal was submitted by Sigrún Alba Sigurðardóttir. The focus of this year‘s exhibition will be on the seaboard, which is grand in scale, as well as being home to little lifeforms, delicate flora and diverse rock formations. There, the large and fierce clashes with the small and fragile, as the waves crash relentlessly on the shore.

At the exhibition, the seaboard will be viewed through the work of artists from different countries, whose culture and economy are greatly shaped by the seaboard and the ocean. Throughout history, those that live near the coast have in large part based their livelihood on the proximity to the ocean, where the shoreline marks a clear border, in addition to being a bridge to other worlds. The seaboard can thus play a part in elucidating the complex positions and responsibilities mankind has towards nature in the Anthropocene.

In relation to climate change, one might view the seaboard as a conflict zone. Rising sea levels have an immediate effect on the seaboard – life at the coast will change as global temperatures continue to rise and this may even force humans to resettle in new places en masse. The exhibition will then call attention to the tenuous yet precious relationship we have with nature, in the hope of moving viewers and causing visitors to rethink their own position towards the seaboard in a whole new light.

The participating artists will be announced at a later date.

Sigrún Alba Sigurðardóttir is an independent curator, having previously curated exhibitions at the National Gallery of Iceland, the LÁ Art Museum, the Reykjavík Museum of Photography and the National Museum of Iceland. She is currently working on an exhibition based on collaboration between Fotografisk Center, Denmark, Landskrona Foto, Sweden, Northern Photographic Center, Finland, and the Akureyri Art Museum, Iceland. This exhibition is set to open in Copenhagen in January 2022. Sigrún Alba is a teacher of art history at the University of Iceland, as well as teaching at the design department of the Iceland University of the Arts. She has published seven books and a number of academic papers, on Icelandic art and photography in particular.

This will be the twelfth exhibition in Hafnarborg’s Autumn Exhibition Series, where the objective is to create an open platform for the arts, taking various viewpoints and subjects into consideration. It is the Art Council of Hafnarborg, along with the Director, that reviews submissions and selects the winning proposal each year.

One Year by Sirra Sigrún Sigurðardóttir is The Globe of Goodwill for the year 2021. Each year, the Globe is sold as a limited edition, but last year the Globe sold out. All proceeds go to benefit children and young people with disabilities. The artist describes the piece with these words:

The sphere is surrounded by an illustration that shows different sun orbits depending on the time of the year in Iceland, from long bright summer nights to the winter solstice when light is only present for few hours a day. The illustration depicts the different brightness levels of the day and the decisive seasonal fluctuations that we experience as the year goes on here by the Arctic Circle. The five colours that stretch around the sphere represent dawn, first light, daylight, sunset and darkness. The most prominent colours are yellow for bright midday and blue for the darkness of the night; in between are orange, pink and purple for the twilight. The piece tries to capture something we are all so familiar with in our daily lives, but it also speaks to our larger context, to our ever-changing position in space where we revolve around an axis on an orbit around the sun.

Sirra Sigrún Sigurðardóttir completed her BA degree from thee Icelandic Academy of Art in 2001 and an MA degree from the School of Visual Art in New York in 2013. Sirra’s work is cosmic in nature, often connected to speculations about our position within the inner workings of nature, physics and the forces that drive the world. It often evokes our status as individuals, our value and smallness where the small is placed in the context of the larger and the meaning is transferred from one phenomenon to another so that it becomes a new perception, a new vision. She has held solo exhibitions at the Reykjavík Art Museum, The Living Art Museum, the Árnes Art Museum, Hafnarborg and Kling & Bang. She has also taken part in numerous exhibitions around the world, including in China, Finland and England. Sirra has attracted well-deserved attention for her art and received grants and recognition from the art funds of Svavar Guðnason, Guðmunda Andrésdóttir and the Guðmunda S. Kristinsdóttir Prize. Sirra has been a member of the artist-run space Kling & Bang since its inception in 2003.

The Globe of Goodwill will be available at our museum shop from December 9th until December 23rd. This year’s Yuletide Lads mobile is also available at the shop until December 16th. To read more about the mobile, please click here.

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.