Hofskirkja Turf

South

Built between 1883 and 1885 by carpenter Páll Pálsson, Hofskirkja is the last turf church constructed in Iceland in the traditional style — a working building that closes a chapter of vernacular architecture stretching back to the Viking Age. The structure is small (under ten meters long): timber framing, stone side walls, and thick turf piled over the roof so it looks like it grew from the ground. Records of a church on this site go back to 1343, and it still functions as the parish church of Öræfi under the care of the National Museum of Iceland. The church sits in the Öræfi district of southeast Iceland, roughly between Skaftafell and Höfn, easily reached off the Ring Road. The surrounding graveyard holds old headstones, and on a clear day the Vatnajökull glacier tongues fill the background behind the grass-roofed building. Entry is free. The interior is open when services are not in progress: plain wooden pews, minimal decoration — exactly what a small rural congregation that needed a warm, durable winter building would have built. The whole stop takes about an hour.

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