The Full Story
About
Our goal is to offer a peaceful stay close to nature while taking practical steps to reduce our environmental impact and maintain a comfortable, low-scent indoor environment. Our cottages are smoke-free, and we avoid strongly fragranced products whenever possible.
Our commitment
How we care for our cottages and surroundings
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.
Some people may experience irritation or other symptoms when exposed to fragrances or certain cleaning products. To help reduce unnecessary indoor exposure, we use fragrance-free detergents and cleaning products whenever possible and aim to keep our cottages free from strongly scented products. This approach may be particularly appreciated by guests who are sensitive to fragrances or prefer a low-scent indoor environment.
You may notice the characteristic sulfur smell of Icelandic geothermal hot water, which we also use when cleaning the cottages. The cottages have hard flooring rather than fitted carpets, with only small rugs that are regularly machine-washed.
We try to reduce our environmental impact through practical measures in our day-to-day operations, including recycling and careful use of resources. Our electricity is supplied by ON Power, an Icelandic energy company that produces electricity from geothermal and hydroelectric sources.
And as we are committed to environmental sustainability, one of our goal is to carbon neutralize every stay. For decades, we have been planting and caring for trees around Kaldbaks-Kot. In fact, the trees surrounding the cottages were planted by hand by our family as part of the long-term restoration and development of the property.
We continue to look for practical ways to reduce the environmental impact of our operations while caring for the landscape around us.
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 had heard that there was a shortage of dentists in the small town of Húsavík in North Iceland. So, in August 1977, we packed our belongings and set off for Húsavík in our Willys Jeep with our three-year-old daughter.
Sigurjón began working as the local dentist, while Snædís worked as a lawyer at the sheriff’s office.
Not long afterwards, we discovered Kaldbakur, an abandoned farm just south of Húsavík, and fell in love with the place. The surrounding land had been heavily affected by decades of grazing and erosion. One of our first steps was to fence the property to keep grazing sheep out and begin planting trees.
Over the following decades, the landscape gradually changed. In 2000, we began building small cottages so that others could experience the place and the surroundings that had become so important to us.