Lutheran Free Church

This guide to the Lutheran Free Church in Reykjavik follows six hundred families who broke from the state church in 1899 over who controlled the congregation, not doctrine, and needed a building fast and cheap. It traces the timber church consecrated in 1903 on a plot overlooking the pond Tjörnin, and its swift outgrowing of that space, with architect Rögnvaldur Ólafsson lengthening the nave by 1905. Two decades later a second expansion changed the building's very material at its eastern end. Look closely at the exterior cladding as you approach for a sense of how the years show on it.