Roof reconstruction and Icelandic sheep dogs

Today has been my favourite day in Iceland so far; four of us went to work on an old horse house. Between 1998 and 2007 Vatnajökull National Park was managed by Ragnar Frank Kristjánsson, he is now a landscape architect and lecturer at the Agricultural University of Iceland. He is a knowledgeable, warm, friendly and funny man with a passion for the park, the history of the landscape and the old buildings.

The building is old, not sure how old but we saw some of the 1362 öræfajökull eruption material (ash) in the earth, this was probably redeposited though. The building was used to shelter horses which had crossed the rivers of the Skeiðarársandur before the bridges were built (settlement times until 1974). We cleared out earth from the roof beams around the back wall which was built into the hill. Then we used split basalt as rooftiles and then covered it in 2 layers of turf, it needs to be 3, we’ve only just started!

 

  

 Ragnar took us to his summer house for afternoon tea, we had tea, crackers with cheese, brown cheese spread (a yummy Icelandic thing made from skyr by-products kinda like dulce de leche crossed with cresm cheese), and jam. He and his family have two Icelandic sheep dogs which were amazingly fluffy and lovely creatures.