I don’t know if Iceland has more churches than any other place, or if I just noticed them more because the architecture ranges from adorable white with a red roof all the way to the modernist style of the Hallgrimskirkja. So without knowing much of the history of Iceland, I turned to the internet to see why so many of Iceland’s churches are so unique!

This blog has a pretty good idea.

As we were driving around (a thing we tend to do quite a bit of…) I kept noticing signs for churches left and right and had a thought about how surely someone has made a map of all of these interesting landmarks.  That would make for a pretty interesting road trip!

…and here it is! (if you really care to look harder, you may be able to find one in english…)

We ended up parking our car at Hallgrimskirkja for our entire stay in Reykjavik so we saw that one a lot due to proximity to transportation but also because the church dominates the skyline.  We were able to find it pretty much anywhere we went in the greater Reykjavik area.  As far as Hallgrimskirkja itself goes, it is probably one of my most unique pieces of architecture I’ve ever seen and makes a nice contrast to the traditional cathedrals of the rest of Europe.

Most of the other churches I saw were from the car window on our many drives around the countryside, so I didn’t get photos of them. However a few different churches did manage to sneak their way onto my SD card. 😉

We were out wandering and came across Landakotskirkja.  It’s a Catholic church built by the same architect who designed Hallgrimskirkja.  This one is built in a neo-gothic style.  So it almost looks like a traditional gothic cathedral, but it’s modern and updated.