Audioguides Reykjavik

Reykjavik was settled around 874 AD by Ingolfur Arnarson, a Norse settler who threw his high seat pillars overboard and followed them to shore to determine where fate wanted him to build. The name he gave the place, Reykjavik, means Smoky Bay, after the steam rising from the geothermal vents along the coast. It stayed a very small settlement for almost a thousand years. The Danes granted it a trading charter in 1786, the date now officially recognized as the city's founding, and it became Iceland's capital in 1845 when the Althing parliament relocated there. It is the world's northernmost capital of a sovereign state, at 64 degrees north, and lives with the consequences: in late June the sun sets briefly around midnight and rises again within the hour, while in December it barely crests the horizon before departing again by 4pm.

Hallgrimskirkja, the church completed in 1986 after 41 years of construction, rises 73 meters above the city in a design inspired by the basalt lava columns of Iceland's landscape.

The view from its tower takes in the harbor, the Esja mountain north of the city, the Snaefellsnes glacier in clear weather, and the almost total absence of tall buildings between Hallgrimskirkja and the sea. Reykjavik is resolutely low-rise and spread out, which gives it an openness unusual in a European capital. About 90 percent of its buildings are heated by geothermal energy drawn from vents below the city, and the tap water, snowmelt filtered through volcanic rock, is by common agreement the best tasting in Europe.