Another Big Dig

This is Hólar í Hjaltadal (Hills in the Valley of Hjalti, who was the first settler there) It was the other diocese in the old days. My grandfather the photographer (my mother's father) was born in 1873 and he had his education here, but not in these houses, they were built later. But as a young man I suppose he played on these grounds not knowing what lied beneath his feet.
In 2006 started an excavation to find the old houses at Hólar were the first bible was printed in Icelandic in 1584, Guðbrandsbiblía - The Bible of Gudbrand.
We visited the site and were guided through the dig and told that they had found some carved letters buried into the floor - the floor was of mud of course - or it fell through a parsed laid floorboards.
It was a very strange feeling to stand where the typesetter stood when he was putting the letters together for the Great Book.
The red house in the trees is Auðunarstofa, which I have mentioned earlier in this blips - it stood for five hundred years and then it was sold as firewood (1316-1810). This is the new one - rebuilt in 2002.