Borg á Mýrum: Egil Skallagrímsson’s Farm and Saga Church Site

If you have read Egil’s Saga, or plan to at the Settlement Center in Borgarnes, the story has a real address. Borg á Mýrum sits on a low rise of land due west of Borgarnes township, and it is where the saga’s blunt, brilliant anti-hero actually lived. There is no ticket booth and no gift shop here, just a farm, a church, and a piece of sculpture that turns a thousand-year-old poem into something you can walk around. It takes about five minutes to see and it costs nothing.

The farm behind the saga

Borg was claimed during the Age of Settlement by Skallagrímur Kveldúlfsson, one of Iceland’s earliest settlers. His son, the warrior-poet Egil Skallagrímsson, grew up here and farmed the land as an adult. The place name means “the rock in the marshes,” and the rocky knoll that gives Borg its name still rises behind the church. A church has stood on the site since roughly the conversion to Christianity around the year 1000; the present building dates to 1880 and is still in use, so treat it as the working church and private farm it is.

There is a second literary layer here too. The historian and saga-writer Snorri Sturluson lived at Borg for a few years in the early 1200s, before moving on to Reykholt further inland, and he is widely thought to be the author of Egil’s Saga itself. You are standing where the story happened and, quite possibly, where it was written down.

Sonatorrek: a poem carved into the landscape

The most striking thing at Borg is Ásmundur Sveinsson’s abstract sculpture Sonatorrek, erected at the site in 1985. Its name comes from the poem Egil composed after losing two of his sons, Gunnar to illness and Böðvarr to drowning. In the saga Egil, wild with grief, shuts himself away to starve, and only channels his loss into verse at his daughter’s urging. The sculpture reads as a figure bent under that weight. Knowing the poem before you arrive changes how the piece lands, which is why Borg works so well as the outdoor companion to the indoor Settlement Center exhibition in town.

Making it a stop, not a detour

Borg is one of the easiest additions to the classic Borgarfjörður circuit that most Hvítá Inn guests drive.

• Getting there: About 5 minutes west of Borgarnes on Route 54; roughly a 20-minute drive from the Hvítá Inn. A small parking area sits by the church.
• How long: 5 to 15 minutes to see the church exterior, the sculpture, and the mound; longer if you read the poem on the spot.
• What to bring: A windproof layer — the site is open and exposed to sea wind off the marshes — and sturdy shoes for the uneven ground.
• When to go: Any time of year; there is nothing to open or close. Long summer evenings give the low sculpture the best raking light.
• Respect: This is a private farm and an active churchyard. View the church, sculpture, and mound from the marked area and keep clear of the farmhouse.

Pair it with the Settlement Center’s Egil’s Saga exhibition and with Skallagrímur’s reputed burial mound in Borgarnes itself, and you have a compact half-day that walks the whole arc of the saga.

Where to Stay

The The Hvítá Inn sits on the bank of the Hvítá river at Hvítárbakki, about 20 minutes east of Borg and squarely on the Borgarfjörður touring roads, which makes it an easy base for combining Borg á Mýrum, the Settlement Center, and the waterfalls and lava fields further up the valley in a single unhurried day. Book direct on Ourhotels.is for the best rate.

Photo: Norrænn via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.