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Reynir Church

Region: South Iceland
Coordinates: 63.4189376° N 19.0478468° W

The Reyni’s Church belongs to the Vik benefice in the Skaftafell Deanery. In 1929 it was decided to build a church in the village Vik and the parsonage was moved there from Reynir in 1932. The remaining church was moved a short distance from the farm Reynir, which dates back to the early settlement.

According to the legend one of the early farmers of Reynir was obliged to build a church before autumn. The timber arrived late in the summer and he could not find a carpenter for the work. One day, a stranger showed up on the doorsteps and offered to help him build the church. His wages were to be the farmer’s 6-years-old son unless the farmer could guess the stranger’s proper name. When the work was nearing its final stages, the farmer became more and more worried, because he was not close to knowing the stranger’s name. One day he went for a stroll and lay down in a grassy slope and fell asleep. He dreamt that he heard a woman’s voice recite the following: “Soon Finnur will leave, father from Reynir, with your little playmate”. When he woke up, he went straight to the church, where the stranger was just finishing the construction, and said to him: “Soon the work is over my good Finnur”. The stranger dropped the last plank and vanished into thin air. The farmer and his family lived happily ever after.