Further Maurer stations

From Stykkishólmur I went east to my next destination. The drive was long and the first 100 km of it were only gravel road (ungeteerte Strasse).

The landscape along this drive was mostly unspectacular, nothing compared to what I'd seen in the previous days. But I can show you more "Maurer" stations that were on this way.

This is Helgafell, a church and farmstead located picturesquely by a small lake.

By the way, all these churches are surounded by small graveyards, and while the churches themselves were always locked up, I could look at the graves, searching for old ones of people that Konrad might have met when he was here. I took photos of potential candidates and later when I have more time, I will go through the names to see if any of them are "hits".

I passed Hvammsfjörður, a fjord of which the only thing I found noteable is that it looks exactly like a boot (see map image).

The next church is quite beautiful, it's Hjarðarholt and this place has a long history, it actually is already mentioned in one of the old sagas.

After Hjarðarholt I had a little bad luck with the road. Information for all travellers: road 587 is 4WD only, it crosses a river (one of the 10 rivers in Iceland named Laxá) and there's no bridge. The river did not look deep, I would have walked through, but I did not dare to cross it with that small 2WD rental car, so I turned around and drove back to use an alternative road.

The last "Maurer" station for today was the most interesting. It is named Þingeyrar. It is located with water on three sides, the sea in the north, lake Hóp in the west and another smaller lake in the east. This place has also a long history. The name refers to an old thingstead that must have been here. Then from the 12th to the 16th century there was a monastery here named Þingeyraklaustur. The monastery ended (I assume with the reformation) but the church remained. On 8-9 Aug 1858 Konrad Maurer lodged here and collected folk tales together with Runólfur Ólsen. On his departure he gave Runólfur's 8-year-old son Björn a copy of his Gull-Þóris Saga (a 14th century saga that Konrad was the first to publish). Björn M. Ólsen (1850–1919) later became a leading Icelandic philologist and when the University of Iceland was started in 1911, he was appointed its first rector. So maybe that book was one spark that had kindled Björn's interest in saga literature.

When I came to Þingeyrar today, I met the owners Ingimundur Sigfússon and his wife Valgerður Valsdóttir. I told them who I was and they kindly invited me into their house for tea and apple cake. They knew well who Konrad Maurer was; Ingimundur Sigfússon had been the ambassador of Iceland in Germany for six years, and in this role he had come to Munich in 1998 for the inauguration of the new stone on Maurer's grave, and had held a speech there. He also knows Jóhann J. Ólafsson and Kurt Schier, the Konrad-Maurer-expert from Munich University, well. They both spoke excellently German while we talked about the story.

I think I have never met that many ambassadors and former ambassadors in such a short time in my life before! :)