Suðurhlíðar
Heath-covered hillside where wild crowberries and blueberries have been foraged for generations.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Suðurhlíðar in Reykjavik follows a heath above the city known since the thirteen hundreds as the shieling Víkursel, where herders once grazed cattle and picked crowberries and blueberries each autumn. In 1940 and 1941, British and then American troops arrived to guard a new airfield below, digging trenches and gun emplacements into that same slope. Look for the low, dark-leaved carpet of blueberry, crowberry, and ling that still covers the ground where soldiers once stood watch.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Heiðmörk
Pseudocrater cluster and reforested heath where quarrying for a wartime airport nearly erased a volcanic landmark.
Rauðhólar
Cluster of rust-red pseudocraters carved by steam explosions, once numbering in the hundreds before quarrying stripped most away.
Reykjavik Harbour
Working harbor where fishing trawlers still dock beside a quiet stretch of wartime history.
Austurvöllur
Grassy civic square laid over a farm's old hayfield, ringed by cafes and watched over by a bronze independence leader.
Laugardalur
Geothermal valley park where women once washed laundry by hand in steaming spring water.
Esjan
Volcanic mountain range of basalt and tuff, its name an old word for flagstone, rising north of the capital.