Beautiful old things.

Earlier this week we went on a small camping trip to the southwest area of Iceland,s tarting from Reykjanes, then going east along the south coast and then up to Flúðir, a small town where we camped for the night. On the way there we stopped in a tiny town called Eyrarbakki and went to see a museum that's built in a house names simply as Húsið á Eyrarbakka, The House of Eyrarbakki. Its name hints at the grandiosity and large size of the house - well, at least in comparison to the rest of the buildings of the town... in any case if you happen to drive through this town do go see this museum. It's amazing.

I took loads of photos inside, of course. Let's now have a look at how the rich people of Iceland used to live in the times of old.

First is the kitchen downstairs. Yes, there's another one on the first floor as well - the people who used to live in this house were, by Icelandic standards, very well off. I have to say I love the huge coffee mills and blue x white china... and look at those grinding rocks, they are indeed made of lava.

I still want to get my own coffee mill, although preferably a lot smaller one than these two. And a roasting box, whatever those are called in English.

The downstairs living room on the right side...

...in the middle...

...and to the left. I really should have taken the photos a bit closer together so I could have made a panorama image of them but oh well. :þ

The sleeping areas were upstairs - the house had altogether three floors, ground floor and two above it. This room has belonged to a family member so it's quite fancy in comparison to -

- the room above it. I'm guessing this room may have been for the female servants.

Old playthings always have my heart. :3 I'm really curious about the two games in the front (I recognize the chess board behind them of course). What are they? How are they played?

EDIT: the board game in front is called Matador, it's Danish and first came out 1930. All thank yous go to Miss F. and her sharp eyes for recognizing it!

They also had a room to showcase all the different items used to make clothing etc. Here were a selection of spinning wheels, both the European kind and the smaller, more typical to Iceland -ones. You can see one such spinning wheel right next to the lady-dummy.

I saw this saddle upstairs and holy wow how beautiful it is! *_*

I probably could not sit in it without falling immediately though. Women's saddles look kind of difficult to sit upon...

The owner herself. She obviously had no trouble sitting in a side saddle.

Here's the upstairs kitchen I mentioned. Very cosy looking although I have to wonder why they had one besides the huge kitchen downstairs.

It's a mini stove!

I've still got plenty of photos, including some amazing samples of embroidery and lace and then some photos from the part of the museum where random items are put on a display in glass cases. Might be better to put them in an entry of their own though, since I'm probably going to go a little bit gaga over a few of the items there (especially the embroidery, oh my Bob).