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In the past, iron smelting from bog iron was performed in Iceland. The use of metallurgical furnaces called bloomeries were used to smelt iron throughout the Middle Ages. Thereafter the practice steadily declined until it was completely abandoned in the 17^th or 18^th century. The knowledge of this ancient craftmanship has since been forgotten to time, leaving numerous questions about the bloomery process unanswered.

In the 1970s, only a few of Iceland’s turf houses were still inhabited. Having served as the primary form of housing for more than a thousand years, the Icelandic turf farm had now played out its role, and with no comprehensive preservation plan in sight, the remaining farms faced extinction.

The exhibition juxtaposes information gathered from probate inventories preserved at the National Archives and the artifact collections of the National Museum in order to dive into the material world of people in the 18^th and 19^th centuries.