Petra's Stone Collection

The stones are not behind glass. Petra gathered them over decades, and they are set into the garden beds and through the rooms of the house, so the collection and the home are one place.

Quantity comes first here: translucent chalcedony, agates banded in rings, jaspers in deep reds and earth tones, quartz, amethyst, and volcanic rock studded with calcite and intricate zeolites. Alongside the minerals sit the other things Petra kept — pens, matches, stuffed birds.

Almost nothing is labelled. There is no arrangement by type, by mineral or by origin, and the written material is about Petra rather than about the rocks. Come to look at stones in bulk, not to learn how to tell them apart. The garden is well kept, and it carries as much of the collection as the house does.

• Little labelling — the stones are not sorted by type or origin, and names are few. This is a collection, not a curated mineral display.
• Much of it is outdoors — the garden holds as much as the house does, so dress for the weather.
• Toilets on site.
• Children are welcome — the site is set up for them as well as for adults.
• A stop, not a day out — the collection is small, and it fits into a drive along the east coast.

Petra's Stone Collection stands in Stöðvarfjörður, a village on the coast of East Iceland, and the road along the fjords runs through it. Almost everyone arrives by car, parks at the site and walks in from the road. The house and its garden sit together on one plot, so the walking starts inside the gate, between the garden beds.

Better: early in the opening day, with time in hand before the doors shut.

Avoid: turning up close to closing — the gate is locked on time, and the garden is then only visible over the fence.

The collection is open every day, so the day of the week makes no difference; the hour does. A large part of it is outdoors, and a dry, bright spell makes the garden worth the walk.