The Island of Grímsey

Grímsey which is situated in the mouth of Steingrímsfjord is by far the biggest island in Strandir. In former times there was a farm on the island and well into the 20th century it was a seasonal abode for fishermen. A lighthouse was built on the island in 1915 and rebuilt in 1949 after the former was destroyed by a bomber plane during World War II.

The name Grímsey means “Island of Grímur” after a settler from Norway who spent his first winter in Iceland on the island. Once during the winter he took his infant son Þórir wrapped in sealskin with him on a fishing trip, and caught a merman, a legendary being with gifts of prophecy. The merman said there was no use in saying anything about Grímur´s future but added that the boy in the sealskin would settle in Iceland where the family´s mare would lie down with all her burden on her back. Later that same winter Grímur and his men were lost at sea but his wife took his son and travelled for a year before the mare lay down on the southern part of Snæfellsnes in the West where Seal-Þórir later became a great chieftain.
For a time in the first half of the 20th century Grímsey was used to keep arctic foxes. The cubs were released on the island in summer and then killed in winter when the furs were most valuable. A great number of puffins nest in Grímsey and sight-seeing tours are organized from Drangsnes on the boat Sundhani ST3.

The lack of fresh water can be a problem in Grímsey but in the cliffs on the west side there is a spring where fresh water is always available in spite of drought or frost. The spring was blessed by Guðmundur the Good, a remarkable 13th century bishop whom Icelanders tried to get canonised.

Grímsey and the Giantess

According to folk-tales giants called ‘tröll’ lived in Iceland before the settlement. Thes giants were creatures of the night and turned to stone if the sun shone on them. The giants and giantesses had retreated to the Westfjords when humans settled in other parts of the country. Three of them decided to dig a canal between the Westfjords and the rest of the country and make the northwest the abode of giants. In addition they decided to make new islands from what they shovelled away.

West of narrowest strip of land between Breiðafjord and Húnaflói Bay two giants, a male and a female, dug Gilsfjörður and made the innumerable island in Breiðafjörður. In the east a single giantess dug Kollafjörður but was only able to make a few skerries and islets. The giants all became engrossed in their work and forgot the time. When they realized that the sun was about to rise they had to find shelter as soon as they could. The couple in Gilsfjörður ran eastwards over the mountains and out along the shore of Kollafjörður but only got as far as Drangavík close to the farm of Kollafjarðarnes where they stand to this day. The male became the pillar of rock which is wider at the top while the giantess is the one that is narrow at the top while on the lower part you can discern a stomach and buttocks.

The giantess digging from the east side was able to jump over Steingrímsfjord and stopped by a cliff named Malarhorn where the village of Drangsnes is now. She had left her ox there when she started digging. Looking back over Húnaflói she saw how ineffective her attempts to make islands had been and became so angry that she threw her shovel at the cliff of Malarhorn so that a large part of it with the ox and everything else split from the mainland and became the island of Grímsey, the largest island in Húnaflói. At the same moment the sunlight struck her and she became the pillar of rock in the middle of the village of Drangsnes. There she stands to this day on the shore and looks at her ox which stands in the form of another rock at the northern end of Grímsey. Legend has it that the rock faces of Grímsey and Malarhorn are the same. Drangsnes literally means ‘the rock on the promontory’.