The Origin

In the book Íslenskur Aðall (Icelandic Aristocracy) by the Icelandic author Þórbergur Þórðarson, which was first published in 1938, there is an anecdote about a man called Sólon Guðmundsson - an “aristocrat”. He lived in a fishing village in the North Western part of Iceland where he had a small house. He was a very hospitable man and his house served as a private hotel for many other “aristocrats” who did not have a fixed address or position in society, but chose freedom and mobility to be more fit for the study and enjoyment of life. Sólon Guðmundsson was a man of many talents. Early on he became familiar and efficient with most jobs on both sea and land, for example he was a good carpenter. Sólon was known for going his own ways, often doing things in a playful and childlike manner. When Sólon was an old man he sold his house and started building a new one, using mostly wood and corrugated iron, a widely used building material in Iceland. First he made a wooden construction in an ordinary way, then he fixed the corrugated iron sheets on the inside of the wooden frame and started living in the house already at that point. The building process was to continue depending on the economic situation and other circumstantial conditions. Sólon wanted to build the house in a completely reversed order. That is, putting the corrugated iron on the inside and finishing with wallpaper on the outside. When Sólon was asked why he planned to build the house in this way, he answered with a faint smile: “Wallpaper is to please the eye dear, so it is reasonable to have it on the outside where more people can enjoy it.” Sólon did not get far with his project because some well-intentioned people managed to persuade him to retire to an old people’s home. There he was well cared for until he died on the 18th of October 1931.

The House

In the summer of 1974 a small house was built in the same fashion as Sólon Guðmundsson intended to do about half a century earlier, that is to say an inside-out house. It was completed on the 21st of July. It was built in an unpopulated are of Iceland and in a place from which no other man-made objects could be seen. The existence of this house means that “outside” had shrunk to the size of a close space formed by the walls and the roof of the house. The rest had become “inside”. The house harbours the whole world except itself.

The Writer

Hreinn invited the writer Einar Guðmundsson to enter “outside" in order to compose a poem. Thus the writer became the first and only person to be completely alone “outside”. He took with himself a stool and stayed outside for quite a while. In the meantime I sneaked this snapshot of him through the window.