One little drawing of a typical old Icelandic timber house

This drawing is an unfinished one, that’s because I was going to use it on a postcard back in the day’s when my wife and I ran a small shop downtown Reykjavík where we sold our design and handmade things. But I decided not to use it. Too simple, no real perspective and looks more like I made it for the owner of the house (which I did not) then a drawing that had some real meaning or a point.

It’s a typical old Icelandic timber house from early 1900 that you can find in most cities and towns in Iceland. But after there was a massive fire in Reykjavík in 1918, that destroyed most of the timber houses in the downtown area, it became forbidden to build timber houses in the city. So today we only got few left from this period, and sadly too many of them have been destroyed. But some, like this one, have been renovated and stand as a monument for this time in Icelandic building history.

© Bragi Halldorsson