The Full Story
About
Our goal is to provide our guests with environmentally friendly cottages by keeping them smoke-free and free of fragrance, mold, chemicals, and solvents.
Our commitment
to human and environmental friendly stay
The houses are all natural solid wood from Estonia where forestry is under control, supervised and certificated by EEC. They are built with natural, solvent free, and non-toxic building materials with minimal negative human impact.
Chemicals and cleaning agents in our daily lives can be hazardous to our health and often are the cause of symptoms such as headaches, restless sleep, muscular pain, fatigue, etc. Therefore, procedures are to clean and wash with fragrance free detergents and earth friendly chemicals. This is to suit people who suffer from allergies, respiratory problems or chemical sensitivity.
When you enter our houses you might smell the sulfur from our hot water which we used to clean your house. The floor has no carpet, only small “cozy mats” which are regularly machine washed.
We do all our best to take part in environmental issues, therefore, for example, we recycle in our daily lives.We also use clean energy from ON Power’s renewable sources for electricity consumption.
And as we are committed to environmental sustainability, one of our goal is to carbon neutralize every stay. In the meantime, we have been planting trees around the cottages for decades (yes, all trees around the cottages were planted by hand by us). In other words, by staying at Kaldbaks-kot Cottages, all our guests support Icelandic nature.
Our story
We discovered an abandoned farm, Kaldbakur, and fell in love with the place. Our first work was to put up fence all around the farm to keep the sheep away and plant trees.
Moving to Húsavík
It was the year 1977. Sadat met Begin in Israel. The first personal computer, "Commodore PET", was demonstrated in Chicago. Jimmy Carter became president in the USA. Deng Xiaoping was restored to power in China. Elizabeth II celebrated her silver jubilee as queen and Led Zeppelin's last concert tour in USA.
This is the year when we graduated from the University of Iceland, Snædís, as a lawyer, and her husband Sigurjon, as a dentist. We were under the influence of the hippie culture, characterized by peace, concern for the environment, and rejection of Western materialism, and the dream was to move away from the capital, Reykjavik.
Kaldbakur
We heard that there was a shortage of dentists in the small town Husavik in North Iceland. So, in August we packed all our household items and our three years old daughter in our Willys Jeep and started our journey to Husavik.
Sigurjon worked as the local dentist and Snaedis as a lawyer at the sheriff's office.
We discovered an abandoned farm, Kaldbakur, south of Husavik, fell in love with the place and bought it. The land surrounding the farm was very poorly vegetated and eroded, due to overgrazing for decades, but the view was unbeatable. Our first work was to put up fence all around the farm to keep the sheep away and plant trees. After a hard work for 25 years the surroundings had changed dramatically.
In the year 2000 Sigurjón and Snædís began to build small cottages to be able to share their little paradise, they had made just outside Húsavík, with others - to enjoy.