3 in 1!

I have a rather complicated work related story to relay, but in the end it gets around to a point. Of course, it is a point I have made before, about the totally bizarre way things really and truly do seem to work out here in Iceland. 

As some of you might know, Skáli Íslendings, aka Viking Aldan, aka Vikingaheimar aðalbygging, will house Gunnar Marel's Viking ship, Íslendingur. The ship is a work of art, in my opinion, and the captain a national treasure, not only did he build it by hand, he then sailed it across the North Atlantic with a crew of 8. At first, Íslendingur was the only thing that was supposed to be in Skáli Íslendings. 

Well, I of course changed that. Innocently sent the mayor an email way back in 2003, asking, 'Wouldn´t you like a Viking exhibition to go with the ship?'. The mayor, smart man that he is, decided to give my idea a go. So, that is how two projects, the Viking exhibition I curated and Gunnar's ship sailing, came to be housed in the same building. And in fact, since both projects celebrated the 1000 year anniversary of Leif Eiriksson's voyage to America, and both projects were sponsored by the Leifur Eiriksson Milliennium Commission of Iceland, it is entirely appropriate from a content standpoint that they be together. And it turns out that the architect of the building actually had an eye towards the design of my exhibition when designing the building; his choice of wood and paint color and general style in fact match with the exhibition. All of this is good and as I hoped it would be and a genuine relief, actually.

But over the last few months, there have been some sticky design issues that I have had the hardest time figuring out, just little things that were making me unsatisfied with how the exhibition was fitting in the hall, and questions about how to organize visitor services (museum lingo for ticket sales, sales shop, and food sales). 

It turns out that Gunnar had been given another exhibition, one that was shown at Menningarhús also as part of the year 2000 observance of Leif's voyage. I was honestly not planning on using any of it. But Gunnar reminded me about it, and a few weeks ago I went to storage to check it out, got pretty excited that a few things might come in handy, some of the chests for instance, and I thought I might be able to make do with a small wooden frame and fake sod walls they had. 

Well, low and behold, Gunnar got it all out of storage yesterday, and behind the kind of icky looking fake sod walls was all the pieces to half of a Viking Age longhouse interior, planking, rafters, chairs, plates and bowls even, and a table. The longhouse is the perfect length and width for the space I had reserved for my 'saga theatre' without really knowing how I was going to house this audio program. And the table, the table is THE EXACT right length to be used as a reception desk, which WE DID NOT HAVE! 

It is starting to spook me out, to tell you the truth.