Have you ever thought about what the city of Reykjavík looked like 100 years ago?
Today, this is one of the most famous corners of the city, right in the city center. This is where
Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur, or
Bæjarins beztu for short, is located,
THE legendary hot dog stand, where celebrities such as Bill Clinton, the band Metallica and Kim Kardashian have eaten their hot dogs.
But 100 years ago, people stood right here by the sea.
The clear view has long since been blocked off, today you are surrounded by new buildings towards Arnarhóll, including the large shopping center where H&M and the Penis Museum are located, among others.
The clear view has long since been blocked off, today you are surrounded by new buildings towards Arnarhóll, including the large shopping center where H&M and the Penis Museum are located, among others.
The hot dogs (pylsur) still taste good though!
The last time we ate hot dogs here with the kids, we noticed a kind of monument opposite the stall - the stone remains of an old jetty that led directly into the sea here 100 years ago.
On one side of the jetty, there are display boards and old pictures on a rusty frame that show the development of the place in the last 100 years very clearly.
This is what it looked like in this picture around 1928 - the view of the city from the sea at this point. You can see the jetties for the ships that still lead into the sea everywhere, and the big white house on the corner of Tryggvagata / Pósthússtræti.
The house at Pósthússtræti 2
The large white house on the corner of Tryggvagata and Pósthússtræti was built in 1919 as the headquarters of the country's first shipping company, Eimskip.
The history of Eimskipafélag, the "Steamship Society", began in 1912. At that time, around 14,000 people (15% of the Icelandic population at the time!) became founding members of the association, paid in their money and preparations for the purchase of the first steamship began. The society was officially founded in January 1914, the first chairman was Sveinn Björnsson (born 1881), who became the first president of the Republic of Iceland in 1944 and died in office in 1952.
At the moment, his son Björn Sv. was just joining us in Icelandic class. Björnsson (1909 - 1998), who worked at a branch of Eimskip in Hamburg in the 1930s, where he became enthusiastic about the ideas of the National Socialists and joined the Waffen-SS in 1941. During the war he worked as a propaganda officer for the Nazis in Denmark. He was arrested as a war criminal in Denmark at the end of the war, but returned to Iceland as a free man in 1946 before a trial - his father, the President of Iceland, was probably pulling the strings in the background. Björn Björnsson denied any involvement in the actions of the Nazi regime throughout his life.
The house at Pósthússtræti 2 was built in 1919 as the headquarters for the newly founded first Icelandic shipping company, Eimskip. In the pictures here, the house was therefore still a new building. But the house still exists today - today it houses the "Radisson Blu 1919" hotel, which advertises that the hotel is "located in one of the most beautiful historic buildings in Reykjavík".
The house at Hafnarstræti 15
In the background you can also see another historic building in the city, the bright yellow corner house, which today houses the Hornið restaurant, among other things. The house at Hafnastræti 15 was built in 1898, a two-story wooden house built on a base, with a basement and an extended roof.
At that time, these houses were located right by the sea, just a few meters from the port facilities.
Here I have marked again where the legendary hot dog stand is today.
Changes to the coastline since 1920
The city's coastline has changed massively over the last 100 years - while in 1920 you were standing right by the sea, today you are still in the middle of the city. On this information board on site you can see very clearly how the coastline has changed from 1920 to today. The dark lines are from 1920, you can clearly see the old jetties for the ships.
The light lines are from today - all the buildings that stand here today would have stood in the middle of the sea less than 100 years ago. This includes, for example, the Tollhúsið, the customs house built in the late 1960s, where the Kolaportið flea market is now located, ...
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| Older photo of the Kolaportið |
... but of course also the Harpa concert and conference center, which was finally completed in 2011 after the financial crisis.
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| Harpa (October 2023) |
Here is the panoramic view from the Arnarhóll hill in summer 2023...
...and for comparison, an old photo with a view from Arnarhóll to the port facilities from 2004.
All of these buildings that you can see in the picture here, from the Hafnartorg shopping center that opened in October 2018 to the new Landsbankinn building and the modern hotel buildings to the Harpa concert and cultural center...
... all of these buildings would have been completely in the sea 100 years ago, far beyond the old coastline from 1920.
I was not aware that the hot dog stand, if it had existed in 1920, would have been right by the sea.
I definitely found the information boards with the pictures on the remains of the former jetty really exciting!
[Translated from
here.]
Fish balls in crab sauce
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