East Iceland Heritage Museum

The exhibition floor is not large, and it is dense. Cases of tools and household objects sit alongside panels on how hard survival in East Iceland was until the middle of the 20th century. The centrepiece is the turf house: furnished as a home, and you go inside rather than look at it through glass. Everything in it is old, down to the woodworking tools — the hand-turned wooden lathe is worth finding.

A second section is about reindeer. The animals were shipped from Norway in the 18th century, and the display covers both the herds and the hunt. There is a mounted reindeer that most people photograph themselves next to.

Not all of it is translated. Some panels are in Icelandic only, and the Icelandic text goes further than the English.

• Time needed: about an hour covers the whole museum, reindeer section included.
• Language: some panels are in Icelandic only, so part of the display goes untranslated.
• Crowds: local school groups visit, and that is the one occasion the rooms fill up.
• Facilities: there is a toilet on site, and the museum has a library.
• With children: the exhibition is small enough to hold a child's attention to the end.

Egilsstaðir sits on Route 1, and the museum is a short detour off the main road. Everyone arrives by car. The car park is at the building itself, so there is no walk in and nothing to climb — you go from the car straight to the door.

Better: a weekday, when the museum tends to be quiet. Avoid: the hours when a school group is in — that is the one time the rooms get crowded.

This is not a busy museum, and the staff have time for questions. It is entirely indoors, so weather makes no difference to the visit; a wet afternoon in East Iceland is a good reason to be here rather than outside.