Fodor's Expert Review Reykjavík 871±2: The Settlement Exhibition

The core exhibit features the remains of a 10th-century Viking longhouse dating back to the year 871, give or take a couple years. Unearthed in 2001 during the construction of Hotel Centrum, the remarkable find was preserved in situ and now occupies an oval-shaped basement designed especially to frame the excavation site. A large, backlit, panoramic image, showing how Reykjavík might have looked during the age of settlement, encircles the longhouse, and an illuminated strip installed in the surrounding walls marks the layer of tephra used determine the approximate date of the remnants. Sounds and aromas add a multisensory dynamic to the experience, while high-tech media installations provide historic insight into life in Saga-age Iceland.