Borgarnes

Borgarnes stands in the heart of saga country. The settler Skallagrímur Kveldúlfsson claimed the land around Borg, just west of the present town, and built his farm there; his son Egill, warrior and poet, is the hero of Egils saga, and much of the saga is set on these shores. By tradition Skallagrímur and his father Kveldúlfur lie in a burial mound in what is now Skallagrímsgarður, the park at the centre of town, joined there by Egill's son Böðvar, who drowned in Borgarfjörður and whom Egill mourned in his poem Sonatorrek. The island of Brákarey off the point recalls Þorgerður brák, Egill's foster-mother, who in the saga gave her life to save him.

The town itself is young. It was founded in the late 19th century and took its name, "Borg peninsula", from Egill's farm. It became a separate municipality, Borgarneshreppur, in 1913. Although it stands on the sea, it was never mainly a fishing town; ships were once run from here, among them the Eldborg, at times the top herring catcher, but almost no fishing is done today.

The bridge across Borgarfjörður, opened in 1981, linked the town to the Ring Road, and it became a stopping point for travellers between Reykjavík and the north. Borgarnes became a town in 1987, and in 1994 it merged with neighbouring rural districts to form the municipality of Borgarbyggð, of which it is the centre.

The sagas are the town's culture. The Settlement Centre tells the story of Iceland's settlement and of Egils saga in exhibitions and staged performances, and Safnahús Borgarfjarðar, the district museum house, was among the first collections in Iceland to receive formal recognition from the Saga Council, in 2013. Up the valley at Reykholt, Snorri Sturluson, the medieval chieftain thought to have compiled parts of the Prose Edda, a major source for Norse mythology, lived and was killed.

Modern culture has a foothold too. The composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir was born in Borgarnes, and Magnús Scheving, the athlete who created the children's television series LazyTown, grew up here, recalling a school with only three other pupils in his year. The town has its own brass band, and it was one of the filming locations of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

Local identity is that of a market town for a wide farming district. Borgarfjörður's forests, of mixed birch and conifers, hold some of the oldest and tallest birch trees in Iceland.

About 2,150 people lived in Borgarnes in 2024, on its peninsula at the shore of Borgarfjörður. It is the centre of Borgarbyggð and the service town for the surrounding countryside, with the municipal offices, schools, shops and the swimming pool, and a popular stopping place for travellers on the Ring Road.

The economy rests on agriculture, tourism and culture rather than the sea. Farming in the Borgarfjörður valleys is a mainstay, the Agricultural University of Iceland is nearby at Hvanneyri, and Bifröst University is at Bifröst in Norðurárdalur. The town's heating comes partly from Deildartunguhver, Europe's highest-flow hot spring, whose water is piped about 34 kilometres to Borgarnes.

Reykjavík is about an hour away, and the Hvalfjörður tunnel has been free since 2018. Daily life is that of a small Icelandic town — the pool in the morning, the supermarket and fuel station as meeting points, and a steady stream of traffic through on the main road.

Borgarnes is a farming town, and its tables reflect that: lamb from the hill pastures, dairy from the valleys and fish from the coast. Hangikjöt, smoked lamb, is eaten here as throughout Iceland, along with skyr, the thick strained milk product that is technically a cheese, and harðfiskur, wind-dried fish eaten with butter.

Many Icelanders know the town for its roadside eating: the fuel-station grills and fast-food stops along the Ring Road where Icelanders break the drive north. The Icelandic hot dog, pylsur, made from Icelandic lamb, pork and beef and served with fried and raw onion, ketchup, sweet mustard and remoulade, is the classic order. The Settlement Centre has its own restaurant in the old town, and Geirabakarí, is the bakery café that appeared in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

Borgarnes also has a distillery: Reyka vodka has been made in the town since 2005, in a still fed with water drawn from a lava field. Kleina, knotted fried pastries, and snúður cinnamon rolls fill the bakery counters, as they do across Iceland.