Today, we visited Skogar Museum in southern Iceland. It’s a great collection with two indoor areas, the heritage and technical museums, and one outdoor part, the turf homes. The heritage museum is home to thousands of historical and cultural artifacts from Iceland’s past, from its settlement era to the present. There’s also a biological collection of specimens from all across Iceland.
The technical museums, which is situated in another building, describes Iceland’s technology evolution, with exhibits ranging from a Ford model T to jeeps to aircraft. They’ve got some really unique cars, designed specifically for Iceland’s environment and terrain.
The technical museum also showcases Iceland’s constantly evolving search and rescue teams and international communications technology. Finally, the turf homes show how Icelandic farmers lived for over a thousand years, as well as how their homes evolved as resources from the rest of the world became available. There’s a house there that’s made from the timbers of a stranded French ship. On an island with few trees, no wood went to waste.
This museum really served to showcase Iceland’s resourcefulness, as well as their evolution as new technologies came to the island.
Swanson School of Engineering 