Photo: G. Edward Johnson (CC BY 4.0)
Landnámabók says Ingólfur Arnarson threw his high-seat pillars overboard and settled where they washed ashore, around 874, naming the place smoky bay for the steam off the hot springs. That is a story written down some three centuries later — but a Viking-age longhouse really is preserved in place beneath Aðalstræti, dated by a tephra layer to 871, give or take two years. Everything after that is surprisingly recent. Reykjavik was a few hundred people when the Danish crown chartered it as a town in 1786, and almost everything you walk past is 19th and 20th century, much of it corrugated iron over timber — a cheap imported answer to a treeless island.
336 narrations, yours to keep — no subscription, no expiry. Works offline once downloaded, and if it isn’t for you we’ll refund it.
Going somewhere with no signal? Put the guide on your home screen first, then download it from that icon while you are on wi-fi — that way you download once, and it works in airplane mode with no roaming charges. Show me the order →
Every claim in this tour traces back to a named source — excavation records, the heritage authority for the site, and the primary texts themselves. Nothing is copied from other guidebooks, and anything we can't source doesn't make the recording.
Each stop is built from OpenStreetMap · 329 features in this old town (the field-surveyed mapping database behind Apple Maps), Wikidata · 23 cross-referenced entries (peer-reviewed structured records), the heritage authority below, and the primary historical texts where they exist.
Cross-referenced against Modern excavation publications · academic peer-review.
Every sentence is checked against those sources before it is recorded. If a claim can't be traced, it doesn't make the audio.
Every tour is reviewed by a person before it goes on sale. Stop selection, the route and anything ambiguous come back to the editor for a decision, and those questions routinely send a stop back for another accuracy pass. Nothing publishes on a machine’s say-so.
Spot anything inaccurate? Email [email protected] — fixed in the next pass.
The square the parliament faces, the 1796 cathedral beside it, and Government House down the hill — begun in 1765 as a prison.
The oldest street in the city, the Viking-age hall preserved beneath it, and Grjótaþorp, the timber quarter that survived the fires.
The painted street climbing to Hallgrímskirkja, Einar Jónsson's sculpture museum beside it, and the Sun Voyager down on the Sæbraut.
Guðjón Samúelsson's church took forty-one years to build. Its form is usually read as basalt columns.
A Viking-age longhouse excavated under Aðalstræti and left where it was found. The margin in the name comes from an ice-core-dated ash layer.
The small Lutheran cathedral on Austurvöllur, older than almost everything around it.
The concert hall on the harbour, halted by the 2008 crash and finished anyway. Its facade is Olafur Eliasson's.
A timber house on the eastern shore where Reagan and Gorbachev met in October 1986.
Jón Gunnar Árnason's steel sculpture on the Sæbraut. It is a dreamboat and an ode to the sun — not, as often said, a Viking ship.
Tap "Start Walking Tour" and allow location access. The map shows all 16 narration points.
Follow the suggested route or explore freely. GPS tracks your position. Reach a site and the narration plays automatically.
Each site has its own narration — history, architecture, and what the sagas do and do not say. 46 narration points across the full tour.
Narrations play when you reach each site. No buttons, no track numbers. Walk naturally — the stories find you.
Premium narration that sounds like a documentary. Warm and knowledgeable, not a textbook reading.
Every narration is drafted, cross-checked against primary sources, then passed through a second editorial pass that strips unsupported claims. Dates, names, and citations verified.
See all narration points on the map. Tap any point to hear it early or replay it later.
Every significant point in the old town and along the shore. The settlement site and the museums get deep dives; the squares, churches and streets get focused stories.
Spend an hour or a full day. Skip sites, revisit favourites, take breaks. The tour adapts to you.
Three ways, all built in:
The map-tap option means you can stand anywhere — even at home before you travel — and play any narration. GPS just makes it hands-free while you’re actually walking the site.
No. Use the “Download for offline” button before you go, and the entire tour — audio, maps, narration text — works without any data connection. Tap-to-play and the map both work fully offline. GPS itself doesn’t need data; only the download does.
Add the icon first, then download from the icon. On iPhone a guide downloaded in Safari cannot be seen by the home screen icon, so downloading first means downloading the whole thing twice.
Putting it on your home screen — iPhone or iPad (Safari):
On Android (Chrome): tap the three-dot menu at the top right, tap Add to Home screen (some phones say Install app), then confirm. On Android either order works.
If you opened this link from inside Instagram, Facebook or Gmail, you are in that app’s built-in browser. It cannot add anything to your home screen, and a guide downloaded there is thrown away when the app closes. Open the link in Safari or Chrome first.
Two backstops. First, the map shows every site — just tap the marker for the place in front of you. Second, you can manually queue any narration even when GPS is off. The platform never assumes GPS works; it’s the convenience layer, not the gate.
The audio runs ~26 minutes total, but you walk at your own pace. 16 narration points across the site. Most visitors take 2–4 hours; some spread it over multiple visits. Once you buy it, it’s yours — there’s no expiry and no subscription. Come back next year if you like; the link in your receipt always works.
One purchase covers one device session. Most couples share earbuds and use a single phone — the audio is paced for that. If you want everyone listening on their own device, each person needs their own purchase. We do not gate sharing aggressively; we trust visitors to do the right thing.
Full refund if you never trigger a single narration on-site. Partial refund based on how far you got. See the refund policy for specifics.