Travel
The Reykjavík Grapevine 46 Issue 19— 2018
Oh, To Be A Bird! Local history becomes art at Safnahús Borgarfjarðar Words: Jennifer Fergesen Photos : Einar G.G. Pálsson
Distance from Reykjavík: 75km Further information: safnahus.is How to get there: Drive Route One North
From outside the blocky building it shares with the local library, Safnahús Borgarfjarðar passes as the kind of low-tech local museum one finds in any small town around the world. You know the type—glass cabinets full of staid-faced porcelain dolls, phased-out farm tools, empty eggshells arranged by species—the dust-coated debris of obsolescence. In fact, through most of its history, Safnahús Borgarfjarðar fit neatly into this category of museum: it featured a smorgasbord of artifacts from Borgarnes’ past, as well as enough taxidermied animals to fill an Icelandic Noah’s Ark. The museum continued in this capacity until 2007, when Guðrún Jónsdóttir took over the position of museum director. A passionate supporter of the arts (and mother of Grapevine illustrator Elín Elísabet), she saw the untapped creative potential in this motley collection.
A different kind Guðrún explains the museum’s meta-
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morphosis in the orientation speech she gives to every visitor. “This is a different kind of museum. And the reason it is different is because of him,” she says, gesturing to a photograph of Snorri Freyr Hilmarsson, a set designer based in Reykjavík. She invited Snorri to reinterpret the m u s e u m’s collection through an artistic, rather than c u rator ia l, lens. The result w a s ‘B ör n í 100 ár’ (‘Children Throughout a Century,’ in English), a visual poem of an exhibition that opened in 2008. Snorri transformed the main hall of the museum into a floor-to-ceiling family album, its undulating black
Sit down and observe
walls papered with images of daily life in twentieth-century Iceland. Some of the photographs camouflage hinged doors, behind which lie artifacts and snippets of text that share only the most tenuous of con ne c t ion s. A p or t ra it of three sisters, for example, opens to reveal a stained tennis dress and a passage from a medical text describing waterbirth. A snapshot of a bright-eyed baby hides a taxidermied duck ling and a verse about the ephemeral nature of childhood.
Fly, friend
Endless, dreamlike field Other than the hidden excerpts, ‘Börn í 100 ár’ is a textless installation; Snorri made the conscious decision not to include any of the explanatory placards one usually sees in museums. He suggests that visitors take the time to walk through the room without opening any of the cabinets. The effect is an intimate, universalising experience that anyone—regardless of age, nationality or reading ability—can understand. (If visitors wish to learn the provenance of each photograph, they can pick up a catalog—offered in a variety of languages—from the front desk.) Snorri and Guðrún collaborated again to create the museum’s second permanent exhibition, ‘Ævintýri fuglanna’ (renamed ‘Oh, to be a bird!’ in English), which opened in 2013. Here, Snorri tackles the museum’s prodigious collection of taxidermied birds in a disorienting space that recalls a Yayoi Kusama Infinity Room. Rather than ferreting away the specimens in cabinets or drawers, Snorri arranges