Iceland's largest church — and one of its strangest buildings, depending who you ask
74.5m
Tall — tallest building in RVK
41 yrs
To build (1945–1986)
5,275
Organ pipes
Free
Admission (tower costs extra)
The Story
The site itself — Skólavörðuholt hill — was once the highest natural point in Reykjavík, before the city sprawled upward into newer, taller districts. A design competition for a church here was actually held back in 1929, and a different architect won it. That design was never built. Instead, in 1937 the job went to Guðjón Samúelsson, Iceland's State Architect and the country's most influential architect of the era — he'd already designed the National Theatre, the University of Iceland's main building, and Reykjavík's Sundhöll swimming pool.
Samúelsson shaped the church's facade after the basalt lava columns found across Iceland's landscape — the same striking hexagonal rock formations you'll see later this trip at places like Svartifoss. Construction started in 1945, delayed by WWII, and then simply took decades: the crypt was consecrated in 1948, the steeple and wings in 1974, and the full nave wasn't finished until 1986 — 41 years after the first stone was laid. Samúelsson himself died in 1950, so he never saw his most famous building completed.
"He wanted a building that could only exist in Iceland."
As You Walk Around
Easy to miss if you're not looking
Watch the view as you climb Skólavörðustígur. The church sits at the top of the street like a stage backdrop — from down near the bottom, it "closes" the whole view, framed perfectly between the buildings on either side. Most people notice this without knowing it was deliberate.
Check which way Leif Erikson is actually facing. Most assume the statue faces the church behind it. He doesn't — he faces west, out toward the Atlantic, roughly the direction of Greenland and the coast he reached around 1000 AD. He was standing on that hill 15 years before the church existed, and the orientation has nothing to do with the building.
Run your eye — or hand — along the texture of the concrete. Up close, the facade isn't smooth; it's deliberately stepped and roughened to echo how basalt columns actually crack and cool in nature, not just their overall shape.
If you go inside, notice the contrast. The exterior is dramatic and rugged; the interior is almost startlingly plain — bright white walls, a 30-meter ceiling, and clear windows placed so natural light moves through the nave differently depending on the time of day. It's a very Lutheran kind of simplicity, and it surprises people expecting something more ornate.
Fun Trivia
Things most visitors don't know
The statue outside is older than the church itself. Leif Erikson's statue, standing out front, was a gift from the United States in 1930 — for the 1,000-year anniversary of Iceland's parliament, the Alþingi. It had nothing to do with the church, which didn't exist yet, and predates it by 15 years.
The organ arrived years after the building was "done." Built by a German organ maker in Bonn, it's 15 meters tall, weighs 25 tons, and has 5,275 pipes — but wasn't finished and installed until December 1992, six years after the church's consecration.
It's been called both one of the world's strangest buildings and one of its most beautiful. A design blog ranked it the 24th strangest building on Earth in 2014. A year later, Architectural Digest named it one of the 19 most beautiful houses of worship in the world. Both are still cited today.
The church actively removes "love locks." Tourists have tried to leave padlocks on the tower's window bars, the way people do on bridges in Paris. Staff cut off hundreds of them — it's simply not a tradition here, and they don't want it to become one.