Today we visited two museums covering different chapters of the fishing industry that built the Westfjords. In the morning we walked through the Westfjords Heritage Museum in Ísafjörður, housed in the oldest cluster of buildings in Iceland, covering everything from open rowboat fishing to the Cod Wars. In the afternoon we drove through the tunnel to Bolungarvík to visit Ósvör, a small outdoor reconstruction of a 19th century fishing station on the shore.

The Westfjords Heritage Museum sits in Turnhúsið, a warehouse built in 1784 at the tip of the Neðstikaupstaður spit. Neðstikaupstaður is the oldest cluster of houses grouped together in Iceland, built by Danish traders during the period when Iceland was under the Danish crown. The four buildings were a trading store, the store manager’s home, a warehouse now turned seafood restaurant, and a warehouse now turned museum. Two remain private homes.

Ísafjörður’s natural harbor and proximity to rich fishing grounds made it one of Iceland’s most economically significant ports for centuries. In 1900 it was the second most populous town in Iceland after Reykjavík. The museum’s ground floor documents the fishing industry that built it — the shift from open rowboats to motorized trawlers, salt fish processing and export, and the Cod Wars that defined Iceland’s relationship with Britain through most of the 20th century. Three confrontations between 1958 and 1976 over Iceland’s unilateral extensions of its fishing limits — from 4 miles to 12, then 50, then 200 — were existential for a country whose economy ran on fish. Iceland won each round, partly through the credible threat of leaving NATO. From the Westfjords perspective this was not diplomatic history but a fight over the only industry that existed here.

The second floor divides between a boat builder’s workshop, early diving gear, and 190 accordions. The third floor covers local flora, fauna, and historical use of natural resources, and houses the viewing tower.

From Ísafjörður we drove through the tunnel to Bolungarvík, the northernmost village in the Westfjords. Ósvör Maritime Museum sits on the east side of the village by the sea. It is a replica of a 19th century fishing station built on the ruins of original fishing huts. The structures are stone and turf, the same materials used at Glaumbær, applied here to the practical business of processing fish on an exposed shore rather than domestic living.

On display are the rowing boat Ölver, a crew hut with tools and equipment, a salt house, and a drying hut. The rowing boat is the centrepiece — a six-man sexæringur, among the oldest of its kind in the country. Men rowed these boats out to the cod banks in open Atlantic conditions, fished with hand lines, and rowed back with the catch.

The salt house and drying hut document what happened to the fish once it landed. Cod was split, salted, and laid on rocks to dry — harðfiskur, dried fish, Iceland’s primary export commodity for centuries and still produced and eaten today.

Compared to the Siglufjörður Herring Era Museum, which documents industrial-scale processing at the height of the 20th century boom, Ósvör is the pre-industrial baseline — hand tools, open boats, turf walls, and the same fish. The two museums together cover roughly a thousand years of the same industry at opposite ends of its technological development.