Samúel Jónssons’s Art Farm
Samúel Jónsson's Art Farm is an open-air collection of concrete sculptures, a hand-built chapel, and a small museum created by a self-taught Westfjords farmer who turned to art in his seventies after a lifetime of working the land alone in the remote Selárdalur valley. Jónsson mixed his own concrete using sand from the local beach and over the course of nearly two decades created a series of naive, cartoon-like figures including farm animals, a circle of lions inspired by a postcard he had seen of the Alhambra, and the ornate chapel he built to house an altarpiece the local church had refused. He died and was buried on the farm in 1969, and the site has been preserved by a combination of community effort and government support ever since.
A Farmer's Life Work in Concrete, Built Alone in One of Iceland's Most Remote Valleys
Samúel Jónsson was born in 1884 in Arnarfjörður in the Westfjords. His early life was defined by hardship: his father died when he was four, his mother died in 1916, and all three of his children died young. In 1947 he and his wife settled at Brautarholt in the Selárdalur valley at the far end of Arnarfjörður. After his wife died shortly after their arrival, Jónsson lived alone in the farmhouse and tended the land for the rest of his life. Around 1950, now in his late sixties, he began building. Working with concrete he mixed himself using beach sand, he created sculptures of animals, figures, and creatures across the farm courtyard, along with two wooden structures: a chapel and a small museum. The chapel was built partly out of necessity. Jónsson had created an ornate altarpiece that he wished to donate to the local church, which declined it, so he built his own church to house it. The lions in the courtyard, among the most striking works on the site, were based on a postcard he had seen of the Alhambra in Granada.
The work is classified as outsider art or naive art, meaning it was made without formal training and sits outside the mainstream art world's conventions. What distinguishes Jónsson's farm from other examples of the genre is the setting and the story. The sculptures stand in a remote glaciated valley in the Westfjords that sees almost no through traffic, surrounded by the kind of landscape that makes the existence of this labour seem both more improbable and more moving. Jónsson died in 1969 and was buried on the farm grounds. Without a caretaker, the site fell into gradual disrepair, but preservation efforts led by local associations and the Icelandic government have kept the sculptures and buildings standing. It was featured in Atlas Obscura and in Lonely Planet's coverage of the Westfjords, which brought it to a wider international audience.
The farm is located at Brautarholt in Selárdalur, reached via Route 619 along the southern shore of Arnarfjörður from Bíldudalur, a gravel road drive of around 20 kilometres that takes about 30 to 40 minutes. The drive itself is considered one of the most scenic in the Westfjords, with the road running along the fjord beneath steep mountain walls with views across the water. The site is free to visit and open in summer. There are no facilities on site. From Ísafjörður the drive takes around two hours.
