Getting all medieval at Eiríksstaðir

Here’s something you might not know about me.

I studied medieval history at the University of Sydney. 

It wasn’t the most career-oriented degree, I’ll admit. And not relevant in any way to life in Australia.

But I loved it.

So it should come as no surprise that I absolutely loved Eiríksstaðir too.

Eiríksstaðir is an old turf house at the end of a lonely dirt road in Dalabyggð in West Iceland.

It’s one of the places that ‘Lucky’ Leif Eiriksson  may have been born, the guy who may have discovered America centuries before Columbus.

Here, Bjarnheiður Jóhannsdóttir greets you wearing period clothing.

Then she lights a fire and tells you tales from the old sagas in the gloom as a fire crackles and rain patters on the sodden roof.

If only my lectures back at Sydney Uni had been so atmospheric.

I may have got that scholarship to Oxford I’d always fantasised about.