Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
5
with an excellent open-air swimming pool and enough cafés and restaurants to keep you
well fed and watered. That most un-Icelandic thing, the
forest
, makes a welcome
appearance just south of Akureyri in the form of
Kjarnaskógur
, easily accessible on foot
from the town centre and a popular destination for locals at weekends who come here to
walk the many trails that crisscross the forest and to picnic.
Brief history
According to
Landnámabók
, the first Viking ships sailed into Eyjafjörður fjord, its mouth
barely 40km south of the Arctic Circle, around 890, fifteen years after the Settlement
began. The first intrepid pioneers to set foot in the hitherto uninhabited north,
Helgi
Magri
(Helgi the Lean) and Þórunn Hyrna, made landfall at Kristnes, 9km south of
where Akureyri presently stands, believing that Þór had guided them into Eyjafjörður.
Their faith seems, however, to have been in a state of confusion since they curiously chose
to bestow an unqualified Christian name (Christ's Point) on their new home. Although
little more is known about this early period of Akureyri's history, it is thought that Helgi
suffered from a nutritional disease he developed as a child in the Hebrides, where he lived
with his Irish mother and Swedish father before coming to Iceland.
Several centuries passed with little mention of “the cornfield on the sand spit”, as
Akureyri's name translates in English, until 1602, when the town became a
trading post
,
with the establishment of the commercial monopoly which gave Danish merchants the
exclusive right to trade with Iceland. Curiously, though, the traders were not permitted
to take up permanent residence in the town, forced instead to leave for Denmark after
closing their stores in the autumn. It wasn't until 1787 that this punitive monopoly was
lifted and Akureyri became one of six towns in Iceland to be granted
municipal status
,
despite the fact that its population then numbered little more than a dozen and most
trade remained firmly in the hands of Danish merchants and their families. However, it
was to the sea and its sheltered harbour, today located right in the heart of the town
between Drottningarbraut and Strandgata, that Akureyri looked for renewed prosperity.
Indeed, from then on the town prospered, and in the late nineteenth century one of
Iceland's first cooperatives,
KEA
, was established here, going on to play a key role in the
economy (see box below). Iceland's only
university
outside Reykjavík was established
here in 1987, giving the town a much needed youthful boost.
Ráðhústorg
If you're expecting Akureyri's diminutive main square,
Ráðhústorg
, to resemble the
grand central places of towns in central Europe, it's time to think again. Pleasant
though it is, Ráðhústorg is mainly an access point for pedestrianized
Hafnarstræti,
Akureyri's main shopping street, no more than 150m in length, and its parallel
neighbour to the east,
Skipagata.
Together, these two modest streets contain virtually
all the shops and services that the town has to offer and it's within this rectangle that
you'll spend much of your time.
KEA
Spend any time in and around Akureyri and you can't fail to notice the ubiquitous
KEA
logo,
plastered on hotels, fishing boats and even Ka
brensla Akureyrar, the town's coffee-roasting
plant. It's said locally that KEA, the Kaupfélag Eyfirðinga Akureyri (Cooperative Society of
Eyjafjörður and Akureyri), owns everything except the church - and while that's not strictly true,
KEA does have fingers in many pies. Established in June 1886 by local farmers keen to win a
better price for the live export of their sheep to England, the society opened its first co-op store
ten years later and never looked back. Still with headquarters on the main street in Akureyri, and
still operating despite the economic downturn, KEA now owns shares in virtually any local
business you choose to mention, concentrating on the food and merchandise sectors.
