Safnasafnið (Icelandic Folk and Outsider Art Museum)

About Safnasafnið (Icelandic Folk and Outsider Art Museum)

Safnasafnið, the Icelandic Folk and Outsider Art Museum, is an art museum at Svalbarðseyri on the eastern shore of Eyjafjörður, about 15 minutes' drive from Akureyri. It collects and shows work by self-taught artists side by side with trained contemporary artists, and judges both by the same standard.

The artist Níels Hafstein and the psychiatric nurse Magnhildur Sigurðardóttir founded the museum on February 17, 1995. Its base collection now counts about 30,000 works, from dolls and perfume bottles to paintings and sculpture. Much of it is folk art that other Icelandic museums never collected or left in storage for decades.

The museum is spread across two old buildings joined by a modern extension. One was the local primary school and assembly hall, and the other, the cooperative store Gamla-Búð, was built at Svalbarðseyri in 1900 and moved onto the museum grounds in 2006. Since reopening in 2007, the museum has had 10 galleries of different sizes with 474 square meters of exhibition space, and new exhibitions open each year.

Safnasafnið is a summer museum, and the 2026 season ran from May 17 to October 4 with daily opening from 10:00 to 17:00. Check next summer's dates before you plan a visit. Admission is 1,900 ISK for adults and 1,500 ISK for seniors, while disabled visitors pay 500 ISK and children under 14 get in free.

The museum sits right beside Route 1 on the way from Akureyri toward Goðafoss and Mývatn, so it's an easy stop at the start or end of a day in the northeast. Plan on an hour to an hour and a half for the galleries and the sculptures outside. The Forest Lagoon is about 10 minutes back toward town if you want to finish with a soak.