Goðdalir is a town and church site in
Vesturdalur
Vesturdalur ("west valley") is a valley that runs from the head of Skagafjörður, Iceland and cuts far into the central Highlands of Iceland, highlands. Austurdalur valley runs parallel to it. The valleys are surrounded by tall, steep mountains ...
valley in
Skagafjörður
Skagafjörður () is a deep fjord and its valley in northern Iceland.
Location
Skagafjörður, the fjord, is about 40 km long and 15 km wide, situated between Tröllaskagi to the east and the Skagi, Skagi Peninsula to the west. Ther ...
,
Iceland
Iceland is a Nordic countries, Nordic island country between the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between North America and Europe. It is culturally and politically linked with Europe and is the regi ...
.
According to the ''
Landnámabók
(, "Book of Settlements"), often shortened to , is a medieval Icelandic written work which describes in considerable detail the settlement () of Iceland by the Norse in the 9th and 10th centuries CE.
is divided into five parts and ov ...
'', the name encompassed a much wider area, even including all of , Vesturdalur,
Austurdalur
Austurdalur ("east valley") is a valley in interior Skagafjörður, Iceland. The Austari-Jökulsá, one of the two sources of one of the Héraðsvötn, Héraðsvötn's forks, runs through it. The only residence in the valley is at Bústaðir, an ...
, and
Svartárdalur
Svartárdalur is a valley deeper into the interior of Skagafjörður, Iceland. It was previously a part of Lýtingsstaðahreppur
Lýtingsstaðahreppur was a hreppur, an old Icelandic municipality, in the interior of Skagafjörður County, I ...
, however, this is not known with certainty. is the lowest town in Vesturdalur west of the river and the area has flat, wide pastures. The mountain that overlooks the town is called .
The first mention of a priest in in the 11th century. There was a
parsonage
A clergy house is the residence, or former residence, of one or more priests or ministers of a given religion, serving as both a home and a base for the occupant's ministry. Residences of this type can have a variety of names, such as manse, pa ...
there until 1904 where many well-known priests served. One such priest was , grandfather and
namesake
A namesake is a person, place, or thing bearing the name of another. Most commonly, it refers to an individual who is purposely named after another (e.g. John F. Kennedy Jr would be the namesake of John F. Kennedy). In common parlance, it may ...
of sheriff Skúli Magnússon, who was very ostentatious. Sources say that when he would travel, he would call out to anyone he met "Out of the way, ladies and gentlemen, here comes the priest of !"
The parsonage operated in until 1907. The current church there was built in 1904 using lumber from the previous church, which was blown away in a violent storm in 1885. The church was moved and retrofitted between 1994 and 1997, and is now a protected building.
In 1976, a gravestone was provided to the grave of the poet
Símon Dalaskáld, who died in 1916, in ’s cemetery.
References
External links
Goðdalakirkja Akranes museum of photography
{{Authority control
Populated places in Northwestern Region (Iceland)
Skagafjörður
Churches in Iceland