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An early photograph looking across Tjörnin toward Iceland’s Parliament and Cathedral offers a useful starting point for examining Reykjavík’s changing landscape: a view whose location remains recognisable despite the passage of more than a century. The photograph belongs to the work of British explorer Frederick W. W. Howell. In its account of photographic collections held by Cornell University Library, JSTOR Daily identifies the viewpoint as the west bank of Tjörnin, facing northeast, with Esja visible across the bay behind the city. Those landmarks provide a specific basis for comparison, although the supplied account does not establish the photograph’s exact date or identify any people within it. Howell first travelled to Iceland as a mountaineer in 1890 and subsequently published observations and drawings. He returned in 1900 to explore landscapes associated with the Sagas, documenting his journeys with a camera and glass plates. Collector Daniel Willard Fiske purchased more than 400 prints directly from him, helping preserve a substantial visual record now held at Cornell. JSTOR Daily’s comparison draws attention to continuity as well as change. Howell’s Reykjavík viewpoint can still be located, while natural landmarks he photographed, including Gullfoss and the geothermal fields at Haukadalur, remain recognisable destinations. Yet a familiar landscape need not function as it once did. The account explains that Howell photographed the Great Geysir at Haukadalur, the hot spring that gave English the word “geyser”. Today, it says, the Great Geysir seldom erupts, while Strokkur supplies the valley’s more dependable spectacle. Visual resemblance can therefore conceal an important change in what visitors experience. The Reykjavík photograph supports a similarly careful reading. It preserves a documented relationship between water, civic buildings and the surrounding landscape. It cannot, by itself, measure changes in population, living standards or daily life. Its value lies in offering a fixed viewpoint from which to begin asking those questions, while keeping what the image establishes separate from what requires further evidence.
An early photograph looking across Tjörnin toward Iceland’s Parliament and Cathedral offers a useful starting point for examining Reykjavík’s changing landscape: a view whose location remains recognisable despite the passage of more than a century.
The photograph belongs to the work of British explorer Frederick W. W. Howell. In its account of photographic collections held by Cornell University Library, JSTOR Daily identifies the viewpoint as the west bank of Tjörnin, facing northeast, with Esja visible across the bay behind the city. Those landmarks provide a specific basis for comparison, although the supplied account does not establish the photograph’s exact date or identify any people within it.
Howell first travelled to Iceland as a mountaineer in 1890 and subsequently published observations and drawings. He returned in 1900 to explore landscapes associated with the Sagas, documenting his journeys with a camera and glass plates. Collector Daniel Willard Fiske purchased more than 400 prints directly from him, helping preserve a substantial visual record now held at Cornell.
JSTOR Daily’s comparison draws attention to continuity as well as change. Howell’s Reykjavík viewpoint can still be located, while natural landmarks he photographed, including Gullfoss and the geothermal fields at Haukadalur, remain recognisable destinations.
Yet a familiar landscape need not function as it once did. The account explains that Howell photographed the Great Geysir at Haukadalur, the hot spring that gave English the word “geyser”. Today, it says, the Great Geysir seldom erupts, while Strokkur supplies the valley’s more dependable spectacle. Visual resemblance can therefore conceal an important change in what visitors experience.
The Reykjavík photograph supports a similarly careful reading. It preserves a documented relationship between water, civic buildings and the surrounding landscape. It cannot, by itself, measure changes in population, living standards or daily life. Its value lies in offering a fixed viewpoint from which to begin asking those questions, while keeping what the image establishes separate from what requires further evidence.
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