Víkingaheimar
The Viking World Museum
The ship that sailed to America is here. You can stand next to it
Reykjanes Peninsula · Keflavik, Iceland
BEFORE YOU REACH REYKJAVIK
Most people land at Keflavik International Airport and drive straight to Reykjavik. Forty-five
minutes on the road. The lava fields on either side. The city waiting ahead.
Most people miss Víkingaheimar.
It sits five minutes from the airport — a purpose-built museum on the Reykjanes Peninsula
that houses one of the most extraordinary objects in the entire history of Norse exploration.
A Viking longship. Full size. Built to the original specifications. Sailed across the Atlantic
Ocean from Iceland to Newfoundland, Canada in the year 2000 — retracing Leif Erikson’s
route exactly one thousand years after he made it.
This is not a replica behind glass. This is a ship that crossed an ocean.
“This is not a replica behind glass. This is a ship that crossed an ocean.”
ÍSLENDINGUR — THE ICELANDER
Her name is Íslendingur. The Icelander.
Built by Gunnar Marel Eggertsson — a shipbuilder from the Westman Islands who spent years
researching Viking shipbuilding techniques before he put the first piece of oak together. No
power tools for the hull. No modern fastenings. Built the way the Norse built ships — by hand,
by eye, by knowledge passed down through a thousand years of Icelandic tradition.
She is 22 metres long. Built from oak. Clinker-built — the planks overlapping like scales on a
fish, each one giving the hull flexibility that rigid construction cannot achieve. The same
flexibility that let Viking ships survive seas that broke other vessels.
“Built by hand. By eye. By knowledge passed through a thousand years.”
THE VOYAGE OF 2000
In the summer of the year 2000, Íslendingur left Iceland
The destination was L’Anse aux Meadows — the archaeological site on the northern tip of
Newfoundland, Canada, where Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad and his wife Anne Stine
Ingstad discovered the remains of a Norse settlement in 1960. The proof that the sagas were
true. The proof that Leif Erikson had actually been there.
The voyage took the crew across the North Atlantic — the same route Leif sailed in
approximately 1000 AD. Greenland. The Labrador coast. The waters where Jörmungandr was
said to coil beneath the surface.
They made it. One thousand years after Leif Erikson, an Icelandic crew in a hand-built
longship arrived on the shores of North America.
Íslendingur came home to Iceland. She has been in Víkingaheimar ever since.
“One thousand years after Leif,
an Icelandic crew arrived on the shores of America “
WHAT YOU FIND INSIDE
Víkingaheimar was built specifically to house Íslendingur and tell the story of Norse
exploration. The museum is modern, well-designed, and takes the subject seriously.
The ship dominates the main hall — her coloured shields along the gunwale, her sail furled on
the yard, the rigging intact. You can walk the gallery above her and look down into the hull
where the crew would have sat rowing across the North Atlantic.
The exhibitions cover the Viking Age broadly — navigation, shipbuilding, the sagas, the
settlement of Iceland and Greenland, the discovery of North America. Interactive displays.
Original artefacts. Maps that show the extraordinary reach of Norse exploration across the known World
And you can try on a Viking helmet. Pick up a shield. Hold a sword.
THE CONNECTION TO LEIF ERIKSON
Standing in Víkingaheimar, next to a ship that actually crossed the Atlantic, looking at a map
that shows L’Anse aux Meadows — the place where Leif Erikson’s people landed — the
history stops being abstract.
Leif Erikson was not a legend. He was a man who built a ship like this one, sailed it across
water like this, and found a continent no European had mapped.
The museum makes that real in a way that no book can.
VÍKINGAHEIMAR — THE FACTS
LOCATION
Víkingabraut 1, 260 Reykjanesbær — 5 minutes from Keflavik Airport
THE SHIP
Íslendingur — 22m Viking longship, built by Gunnar Marel Eggertsson
THE VOYAGE
Sailed Iceland to L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, Canada. Summer 2000
OPENING HOURS
Check vikingaheimar.is for current opening times — seasonal variations
ADMISSION
Adults approximately 2500 ISK. Children free under 6
TIME NEEDED
Allow 2 hours minimum. More if you want to read everything
AIRPORT CONNECTION
5 minutes from Keflavik International Airport. Perfect first or last stop
GETTING THERE
From Keflavik Airport — drive toward Reykjanesbær town centre. Víkingaheimar is clearly
signposted. You cannot miss it.
From Reykjavik — approximately 45 minutes on Route 41. Worth combining with a visit to the
Blue Lagoon which is also on the Reykjanes Peninsula.
Do not drive past it on the way to Reykjavik. Stop. Give it two hours. You will leave
understanding something about the Norse world that you cannot get from a book.