Welcome to Iceland Guest - Your Online Travel Guide.

Iceland Guest is an information website for your travel to Iceland. On this site you can get all the tourist information you need for your vacation in Iceland. We hope that you will find this online travel guide useful in planning your holidays in Iceland.

About Iceland
Iceland is a refreshingly unconventional travel destination. The Icelandic nature is unspoilt, exotic and mystical with its spouting geysers, active volcanoes, tumbling waterfalls, towering mountains, vast lava plains and magical lakes. Iceland’s fjords, glaciers and highland plains present visitors with some of the most beautiful and enchanting places they will ever see, as well as a rare feeling of utter tranquillity.

For travelers on a quest for action, Iceland’s pristine nature offers great potential for outdoor activities such as snowmobiling, horse riding, cave exploring, hiking, swimming, skiing, river rafting, kayaking and mountain safaris on modified four-wheel drives, to name but a few. Iceland supports a surprisingly diverse Nordic flora and fauna and is an ideal place for ornithology enthusiasts, while also offering some of the world’s best whale watching destinations.

About Reykjavik
Reykjavík sometimes feels like a cosmopolitan capital and a tiny seaside village - all wrapped up in one. But Reykjavík has the best of both worlds; the qualities of a modern, forward-looking society complemented by a close connection to Iceland‚s beautiful and unspoilt nature.

Reykjavík’s legendary nightlife is bolstered by plentiful cultural and social happenings in addition to an abundance of first-class restaurants. The size of Reykjavik city centre is also limited enough to allow for easy navigation by foot. Reykjavík has been described as a young and daring city that is characterized by strong contrasts. Conveniently small, clean and safe, it is more or less free from the major problems that haunt many other capitals. Big city events are frequent, the winter lights festival finished recently with thousands of participants and more tourist at this time of the year than we are used to.

in Focus

22.4.2007

The Golden Plover Arrives in Venice

The golden plover arrives in Venice Visual artist Steingrímur Eyfjörd has been selected to represent Iceland at the 52nd international art exhibition “La Biennale di Venezia” with his work “The Golden Plover has Arrived” in Venice, Italy, in June.

His work is made up of 13 independent pieces of art; photographs, sculptures, texts, drawings, videos and other media.

In his work Eyfjörd mixes Icelandic history with the country at present with images referencing the western world and globalization, as described in a press release issued by the Center for Icelandic Art this week.

Eyfjörd’s work revolves around “The Hedge,” which allegedly was made by an elf, or a huldumadur (“hidden man”), whom the artist contacted through the aid of a medium.

Eyfjörd’s work describes his journey to the home of the huldumadur in south Iceland, which the artist embarked on to buy a sheep from the elf.

According to the press release from the Center for Icelandic Art, “The Golden Plover has Arrived” goes well with the title of this year’s Venice art exhibition, “Think with the Senses – Feel with the Mind. Art in the Present Tense.”

Steingrímur Eyfjörd was born in Reykjavík in 1954. He graduated from the Visual Art and Handicraft College of Iceland in Iceland in 1978, from the Ateneum in Helsinki, Finland, in 1980 and from the Jan Van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, the Netherlands, in 1983.

Eyfjörd has participated in over 35 exhibitions in Iceland and abroad, including the Royal College of Art, London. He was nominated for the Carnegie Art Award in 2004 and again in 2006.

Icelandic artists first participated in the Venice art exhibition in 1960 when Jóhannes Kjarval and Ásmundur Sveinsson represented Iceland. After 1984 Icelandic artists became regular participants in the exhibition.

According to Center for Icelandic Art, “La Biennale di Venezia” is the oldest and most important event in the international world of art. It was created by the Venice city council in 1893 and the first exhibition was held two years later.

The current director of the exhibition is the art expert Robert Storr, who was earlier employed at the MoMA Gallery in New York.

For further information about Icelandic art and the exhibition, click here. To read the exhibition press release, click here.

Source: Iceland Review (www.icelandreview.com).

« back