“My sister and I attended school on the other side of the mountain,” recalls Héðinn Birnir Ásbjörnsson, gesturing across the fjord. “When the roads would close around October or November, we’d stay there for a week. In those early years, we relied on a boat to get to the other side, but eventually we adapted and got snowmobiles.”
Where am I this time? Back in the remote Strandir, in the storied village of Djúpavík. Today, Héðinn is showing me around the remnants of the old herring factory — a site his parents, Ásbjörn Þorgilsson and Eva Sigurbjörnsdóttir, brought back to life when they moved to this isolated fjord in the 1980s.
If Djúpavík hasn’t made it onto your travel radar, let me paint the picture: a handful of wooden houses, a waterfall tumbling down the mountain behind, a cosy hotel run by just two year-round residents, and the rusting skeleton of a ship slowly returning to the earth. What remains of the herring factory stands as a monument to a once-thriving industry. Across the fjord, a mountain striped with snow and dark rock looks uncannily like a scoop of Oreo ice cream. The only sounds are birds. Having grown up in a city, I find the place quietly spellbinding. Héðinn sees it differently. As a teenager, he spent a good deal of time wanting out. “I didn’t appreciate what I had here,” he admits.
Photo by Art Bicnick
The Gold Rush
When Héðinn’s parents took over the factory, the original plan was fish breeding in the old fish oil tanks. That didn’t work out financially, so they turned to tourism while continuing to think up ways to use the space — including annual art exhibitions (more on that in Issue 8, 2025).
“For its time, this was a surprisingly large building,” Héðinn says as he leads me into the processing section, where old machinery still sits in place. “At 6,500 square meters, it was about half the size of the Smáralind shopping mall, which measures roughly 14,000 square meters.”
“But it wasn’t just a massive concrete box. It was the most advanced factory of its kind in Europe when it opened in 1935,” he continues, pointing to the cutting-edge equipment and high level of automation that set it apart.
“Every house had electricity, there was a doctor, a bakery, a shop — you could even fly in directly from Reykjavík on a seaplane. What began as a ghost town transformed into a bustling community. You could say it was a sort of gold rush.”
Djúpavík grew up around the factory, drawing in workers from across the country. “In no time, it had the infrastructure of a modern town for its era,” Héðinn notes. “It was a vibrant hub.”
Now, nearly ninety years on — the factory celebrated its anniversary on July 7 — most of those amenities are long gone. The Westfjords remain unconnected to Iceland’s main power grid, and while electricity is available, outages are common. These days, the family-run hotel, factory tours, and the occasional film shoot are what keep Djúpavík going.
What we now know as Hotel Djúpavík was originally the factory’s women’s quarters. At peak operation, each room held up to eight women, with around 100 housed in total. Women were central to factory life, mainly salting herring for export.
“At one point, about 250 people called Djúpavík home,” Héðinn says, though he notes that some records suggest the number may have reached as high as 450 during peak construction.
Heavy Lifting
Héðinn walks us through the factory at a good pace, his stories holding everyone’s attention — even those who wouldn’t normally call themselves history lovers. We stop beside a ceiling-high, 60-ton boiler that once powered the entire operation.
“The greatest engineering challenge was getting this thing here,” he says. “No crane in Iceland could lift a 60-ton piece, not even in Reykjavík. They had to get creative.”
Rather than buying a new boiler, the factory tracked down a shipwreck stranded on the southern coast, acquired it solely to salvage the boiler inside.
Moving the ship took about four months — first to Reykjavík harbour, then up to the Westfjords. But once it arrived in Djúpavík, a fresh problem appeared: how do you lift a 60-ton boiler out of the sea and into a factory that’s still under construction, with only three men available? They rolled it like a barrel, working around a massive steam valve that kept blocking the path. Every turn meant digging a new hole for the valve. After nearly three weeks, they got it done. Whether it’s a genuine feat of ingenuity or just the Westfjords’ favourite story, it says something real about the people who built this place.
There’s another good story attached to the slowly decaying coaster rusting on the Djúpavík shore. During the factory’s busiest years, housing couldn’t keep up with the number of workers arriving. The solution was to acquire the MS Suðurland, a vessel that could sleep about 30 factory workers. The twist: the ship had originally been built for Swedish lakes and was never meant for open sea. The Icelandic state bought it anyway, apparently by mistake.
Photo by Art Bicnick
Photo by Art Bicnick
A Basque-Icelandic Connection
Back outside, Héðinn stops and nods at one of the tanks with a grin. “This is the one that won the BAFTA last year,” he says — a reference to composer Atli Örvarsson, who recorded sounds inside the tank for the TV series Silo.
Beside the tank stands a newer project from Héðinn’s family: the Basque Centre, which opened its first phase last summer. The Basque connection to this corner of Iceland is older than most people realise. The Basques were among the earliest nations to engage in commercial whaling and had been working the Westfjords since the 17th century. In 1615, a storm wrecked their ships and a violent confrontation with local inhabitants followed — a dark episode known as Spánverjavígin, or The Slaying of the Spaniards, in which at least 32 Basques were killed.
“I wanted to highlight that history,” Héðinn explains, “but rather than dwelling on the tragedy, we aim to explore the relationship between the two nations, each speaking languages few understand.” The centre’s main exhibit is currently a half-finished hull of a Basque boat, built by Icelandic carpenters. Héðinn speaks with clear admiration for Basque boat builders: “They were unparalleled, crafting ships capable of crossing the Atlantic, backed by knowledge unmatched by their contemporaries.” His hope is that one day the boat will be finished, and that Icelandic and Basque rowers will take it out onto the fjord together — just for the pleasure of it.
When our conversation winds down, Héðinn heads off to take care of things around the factory. I spend the afternoon in a camping chair, binoculars in hand, watching eider ducks bob in the bay and their ducklings take first swims. I can’t think of a place I’ve felt more at ease. One thought stays with me from earlier: “It’s about delaying the inevitable decline of this building. It will happen eventually. But we believe this structure has stories yet to tell.”
This article is the second in a series chronicling my recent journey to Strandir. Special thanks to Hotel Djúpavík for the lodging and Go Car Rental for the transportation. To arrange your car rental, visit gocarrental.is and be sure to join Héðinn for a tour of the factory when you visit Djúpavík.
