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The Warehouse (Pakkhusid) at Hofsos is one of the oldest buildings of its kind in Iceland.
It was constructed of logs, with a steep clinker built wooden roof. It was brought to Iceland in 1777, for the Danish Royal Trading Company, known as the Greenland-, Finland- and Iceland trading company, which was the last company to hold a monopoly for the Iceland trade.
Ten years later, monopoly trading was abolished, to be succeeded by free trade. The building has always been used as a warehouse, first by Danish merchants, then by Icelanders. In the 20th century it was used to store such diverse commodities as wool, hay, fishing tackle, and meat. The history of the building before it was brought to Iceland is unknown, but bullets and bullet holes in the building’s fabric have given rise to the tradition, that it had been used by the Danish military in some other part of the world.
In 1991, the building was repaired and partly renovated. On the ground floor, there is an exhibition of objects relating to fishing and the shark fisheries from the Drangey island. Ever since the days of the settlement of Iceland in the 9th century, the people of the Skagafiord District made various use of Drangey: they fished from the island, grazed their sheep there, collected seabirds’ eggs, and trapped birds for food. While a rental was generally paid for egg collecting rights, all had equal rights to trap birds and catch fish. Drangey is a part of the Hof-county.
Pakkhus Hofsos is on nat.is North Iceland Saga Trail
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