Búðakirkja

About Búðakirkja

Búðakirkja is a small wooden church at Búðir on the south coast of the Snæfellsnes peninsula in West Iceland, painted pitch black and standing almost alone at the edge of the Búðahraun lava field. It is the black church Iceland's photographers drive hours to frame, with the coast on one side and the Snæfellsjökull glacier on the skyline.

Seeing the outside costs nothing, and the grounds are open at any hour. Búðir is a short detour off Road 54, about two hours and 15 minutes by car from Reykjavík, and the churchyard is a few minutes' walk from where you park.

A church first stood here in 1703, a small turf building for a parish of about 120 people, but a royal letter abolished it in 1816 because of its poor condition. Steinunn Sveinsdóttir, a widow living at Búðir, then pressed church authorities to let her rebuild and paid for the wooden church herself. It was finished in 1848, and she is buried in the cemetery beside it.

Local people and experts from the National Museum of Iceland restored the building to its 1848 form in 1987. Inside, a single room of roughly 5 by 9 meters seats about 50, with an organ and no heating.

Búðakirkja is still a parish church, so the door is usually locked outside events. Visits inside and black church weddings are arranged by email with the church keeper, and the house rules ask you to keep the cemetery gates closed and stay off the walls.

Most visitors spend 20 to 30 minutes at the Búðir black church, longer if they walk out onto the lava. Summer evening light is the classic time for photos, and the stop fits easily between the seals at Ytri Tunga and the cliffs at Arnarstapi.