Hallgrímskirkja, Reykjavik · Travel Poster

Each poster comes with a letter home. Ella writes about the place, its hidden history, and the funny details that never makes it into the guidebooks.

The statue standing in front of the church, of the explorer Leif Erikson, has nothing to do with it at all. The Americans gave it to Iceland in 1930, fifteen years before construction on the church even began, to mark a thousand years since Iceland's parliament first met. The church itself took forty one years to build, its stepped concrete wings modelled on Iceland's basalt columns, and the architect who designed it died in 1950 having only ever seen the crypt finished. The spire, incidentally, was made taller than originally planned purely so it would outdo the Catholic cathedral across town.

This poster is an original exclusive illustration in watercolour and ink, exclusively painted for the Ella's Adventures travel poster series.

No frame included