The statue that got there first

Everyone assumes the statue outside Hallgrímskirkja has something to do with the church. It doesn't. That's Leif Erikson, given to Iceland by the Americans in 1930 to mark a thousand years since the country's parliament first met, and it was standing there a full fifteen years before anyone even started building the church behind it.

The church itself took forty one years to finish, its stepped concrete wings shaped after Iceland's basalt columns, the same rock formations you see out at the waterfalls and canyons. The architect who designed it, Guðjón Samúelsson, died in 1950 having only ever seen the crypt completed. And that spire, reaching higher than originally planned, was stretched up mostly so it would outdo the Catholic cathedral across town. A lot of quiet rivalry and mismatched timing, all standing there looking perfectly serene.

I painted it in watercolour and ink, that pale stepped tower against an Icelandic sky. There's a poster with a letter home and a postcard if you'd like one.

Shop the poster here: Hallgrímskirkja, Reykjavik · Travel Poster