Klambratún

This guide to Klambratún park in Reykjavik centers on the painter Johannes Kjarval, whose museum, Kjarvalsstadir, opened at the park's edge in 1973, a year after his death. You'll hear how he spent decades wandering Iceland's lava fields and painting them the way many Icelanders still quietly believe them to be, filling moss and cracked rock with faces, myths and hidden people. The guide also traces the park's own past as farmland once called Klombrur, renamed Miklatun before that name was reversed. It's worth pausing by the ordinary boulders near the paths before you decide what, if anything, is watching from inside them.