Borg á Mýrum is an ancient farm and church estate due west of Borgarnes

Borgarnes

Borgarnes is a town located on a peninsula at the shore of Borgarfjörður in Iceland.It has a population of 1,763 . The town is located 60 km north of the capital Reykjavík and is connected to other places in Iceland through the second largest bridge in Iceland, Borgarfjarðarbrú...

 township. Its recorded history reaches back to the settlement of Iceland

Settlement of Iceland

The settlement of Iceland is generally believed to have begun in the second half of the 9th century, when Norse settlers migrated across the North Atlantic. The reasons for the migration may be traced to a shortage of arable land in Scandinavia, and civil strife brought about by the ambitions of...

. One of the country's original settlers was Skallagrímur Kveldúlfsson

Skalla-Grímr

Skalla-Grímr Kveldulfsson was a Norwegian, who was forced to emigrate to Iceland in the days of his enemy Harald Fairhair. His main claim to fame is that he was the father of Egill, but he also deserves a footnote in the history of Nordic literature for having composed the following stanza:...

, who claimed the area around Borg as his land, built a farm and made his home there. His son Egill Skallagrímsson

Egill Skallagrímsson

Egill Skallagrímsson was a Viking Age warrior and skald. Egill is one of the great anti-heroes of the Icelandic sagas.-Life:...

 then continued to live and farm at Borg á Mýrum. Today there is a monument to Egill at Borg.

Borg á Mýrum has been a significant place throughout Iceland's history, and has had a church ever since Icelend was Christianised around the year 1000. The present church at Borg was built in 1880, and is notable for its geographical alignment: it faces North-South, which is not traditional for Icelandic churches. It is also unusual in that the church building does not stand in the church yard, but is separated from it by the farm buildings. The altarpiece

Altarpiece

An altarpiece is a picture or relief representing a religious subject and suspended in a frame behind the altar of a church. The altarpiece is often made up of two or more separate panels created using a technique known as panel painting. It is then called a diptych, triptych or polyptych for two,...

 was made by W.G. Collingwood, an artist and Archeologist who painted the piece after visiting Iceland for an extensive trip in and around the country, from which there exists a collection of paintings, in 1897.

Sources

• Þorsteinn Jósepsson, Steindór Steindórsson og Páll Líndal: Landið þitt Ísland, A-G, Örn og Örlygur, 1982.
• Björn Hróarsson: Á ferð um landið, Borgarfjörður og Mýrar, Mál og menning, 1994. ISBN 9979-3-0657-2