Einar Benediktsson statue

About Einar Benediktsson statue

The Einar Benediktsson statue is a sculpture of the Icelandic poet by Ásmundur Sveinsson, standing beside Höfði House on the north shore of Reykjavík. It shows the poet standing next to a harp, a reference to his verse, and was made in 1964.

Einar Benediktsson (1864–1940), often called Einar Ben, was a poet and lawyer whose work fed the national revival that led towards Icelandic independence. He edited Dagskrá, Iceland's first daily newspaper, from 1896 to 1898, translated Ibsen's Peer Gynt, and published collections such as Hafblik and Hrannir. He was also an ambitious businessman: in 1914 he co-founded the Títan company to harness the waterfalls of Þjórsá for hydroelectric power, a plan that was never built.

The statue's location is deliberate. Einar lived in Höfði House for several years in the 1910s, long before the house became famous as the venue of the 1986 Reagan–Gorbachev summit. The sculpture originally stood in Miklatún, the park now better known as Klambratún, and was moved to Höfði in 2015.

The statue is outdoors, free and accessible at any time, and a stop of five to ten minutes is enough unless you want to read up on the poet. Höfði itself is the mayor's reception hall and is not open to the public, so visitors see the house and statue from outside. The Sun Voyager sculpture is under a kilometre away along the waterfront, so the two combine easily on a short walk. Anyone interested in the sculptor can see more of his work at Ásmundarsafn, the Reykjavík Art Museum branch devoted to him.