Petra's Stone Collection

Petra Sveinsdottir spent decades walking the mountains above Stodvarfjordur and carrying stones home, and by the time she died in 2012 her house and garden held one of the largest private mineral collections anywhere. The east fjords are old basalt riddled with cavities, and what filled those cavities is what fills the shelves here: zeolites in white needles and pink sprays, jasper, agate, quartz, lumps of glassy volcanic rock. The garden is laid out with them along paths and around a stream, and the house is stacked to the ceiling, including the rooms she actually lived in. Her family still runs it, and nothing about the place feels designed.

What you'll find

• The zeolites - needle and sheaf crystals grown in cavities in the local basalt.
• The garden paths - stones laid out along walks and around a stream behind the house.
• The living rooms - her own rooms, shelved to the ceiling and left as they were.
• The collecting story - decades of walking in the mountains directly above the village.

When to go

The season runs roughly May to September, with the house shut through winter, so it is not an option on a dark-months trip along the east coast. Late morning is usually quieter than the afternoon, when coaches working the eastern fjords tend to arrive. An hour is enough unless you are properly interested in minerals.

Before you go

Labelling is thin and largely in Icelandic, so without a guide or some existing knowledge you are looking at a great many pretty rocks with little explanation. The rooms are cramped and awkward once a group is inside. It is charged, and some visitors find the price steep for what is a private house. The village around it is quiet to the point of empty.

Nearby

The eastern fjord road runs north toward Faskrudsfjordur and south toward Djupivogur.

Key facts