Skriduklaustur Monastery

Skriðuklaustur was the last Catholic monastery to be founded in Iceland before the Reformation. In June 1500 the farm of Skriða (in the valley of Fljótsdalur in eastern Iceland) was given to a community of Augustinian canons. However, there had already been religious activity on the site for some years before the official grant. According to local legend, a fifteenth-century priest was going to visit a dying man in the valley of Fljótsdalur when he realised he had lost the bread and wine needed for the sacrament. A boy was sent out to look and miraculously found a full chalice of wine, and a paten holding the bread, standing on the grass by the farm at Skriða. A chapel was built on the site where the bread and wine were found. Later, the Augustinians located their church in the same place. During the mid-sixteenth century religious change was imposed on Iceland by Christian III of Denmark. The Danish government forcibly introduced Protestantism, and in 1554 the monastery at Skriðuklaustur was closed and the lands given to a Lutheran pastor. The buildings occupied by the Augustinians fell into ruins, although the church continued in use for some generations. The site was eventually deconsecrated in 1792. In the early twentieth century the writer Gunnar Gunnarsson bought Skriðuklaustur and built a house not far from the monastic remains. Both the monastic site and the house are now part of a cultural institute which is open to the public.