“For centuries Icelanders survived the cold by building their homes from blocks of turf cut from the ground, and Laufas is one of the best-preserved of these earth houses.”
About Laufás Turf Houses
Turf building was the standard across Iceland from the settlement age until the early 20th century, born of a near-total lack of timber and the need to insulate against the climate. Laufas was a prosperous church farm, and its surviving turf houses, mostly from around the 1860s, were restored as a museum to show this vanished, earth-built way of life.
What Laufas Turf Houses actually is
Laufas is a preserved turf farmstead near Akureyri in north Iceland, a row of gabled houses built into the earth itself, with grass-covered roofs and walls of stacked turf and timber. Once a wealthy parsonage and farm, it now operates as a museum showing how Icelanders lived, insulated against the cold, for many centuries before modern building arrived.
Laufas is a preserved turf farmstead near Akureyri in north Iceland, a row of gabled houses built into the earth itself, with grass-covered roofs and walls of stacked turf and timber.
Building With the Land
For most of Iceland's history, timber was scarce and stone hard to work, so people built with what they had: blocks of turf cut from the ground, stacked thick for insulation, around timber frames. The result kept families warm through brutal winters. Laufas, dating largely from the mid-19th century, is one of the best-preserved examples, its connected rooms furnished as they were when a parson's household lived here.
The Experience
You step through low doorways into a warren of connected rooms under grass roofs: the communal living and sleeping room, the kitchen, the pantry, all furnished with the tools and textiles of 19th-century farm life. The thick turf walls keep the interior cool and quiet, and the green-roofed exterior blends into the hillside as if it grew there.
Why It Matters
Laufas preserves the dominant form of Icelandic housing for a thousand years, a tradition of literally living inside the land. It is a vivid corrective to the modern image of Iceland, a mark of how hard and ingenious daily survival was before the country's recent prosperity.
Laufas preserves the dominant form of Icelandic housing for a thousand years, a tradition of literally living inside the land.
Why Visit
One of Iceland's best-kept turf farmsteads, an immersive look at how people lived warm inside the earth for centuries, an easy detour from Akureyri.
✦ Insider Tips
- 1
Check opening hours; the site runs full hours in summer and limited ones off-season.
- 2
Step inside to feel how the thick turf walls insulate the connected rooms.
- 3
It is a short drive from Akureyri, easy to pair with the town.
- 4
Look at the grass roofs and earth walls to understand traditional Icelandic building.
