Ingólfur's Scabbard
A large bronze statue of Ingólfur Arnarson sits atop a small hilltop park overlooking Reykjavik's harbor. Ingólfur is traditionally considered Iceland's
first permanent settler, in 874. As the story goes, he was exiled from Norway on murder charges, and ultimately decided on Reykjavik's location by
throwing his high-seat pillars (wood posts for his symbolic chieftan's chair) overboard, and letting the gods decide where he'd settle based on
where his slaves ultimately found the pillars washed ashore. (It eventually took the poor slaves 3 years of searching to locate them on a beach!)
I really liked the scabbard design; a wonderfully knotted dragon has caught an eagle by the tongue.
Uploaded on January 19, 2013