200 years and counting

Hafnarstræti 4

When the Danish trade monopoly with Iceland was repealed in 1786, Reykjavík, then still a tiny village of less than 200 inhabitants, received its municipal charter, and local merchants were offered land on which to build free of charge.

Among the first to exercise this right was an Icelander, Páll Björnsson Brekkmann, who had lived abroad for several years and had a Danish wife. The parcel of land he was awarded was bordered by the present-day Hafnarstræti 4 (now The Dubliner), Veltusund 1, Austurstræti 3 and Austurstræti 5. At that time, the sea reached all the way up to Hafnarstræti, then known as Strandgata.

A few years later, Brekkmann’s house and land passed into the hands of a Danish trading company, Randers of Jutland, which built a store just west of the house, probably in 1798. In what was perhaps a foretaste of things to come later on, the business was managed by a Dane, Johan Erland Bøye, known throughout Iceland for a fondness for drink and entertaining on a grand scale.

All good things come to an end, however, and in 1895 the Randers Company was dissolved, and the site passed on to another Dane, Adser Knudsen, a merchant from Ribe in Jutland. Despite a promising start, fate once again intervened, this time in the form of the Napoleonic Wars, which disrupted trade with Iceland and forced the luckless Knudsen out of business.

And so it was that Hafnarstræti 4 found itself playing a central role in one of the most bizarre and colourful episodes in Icelandic history.

In January 1809, an English merchantman, the Clarence, docked in Hafnarfjörður, at that time Iceland’s main port. On board were a Mr Savignac, and a Danish adventurer by the name of Jørgen Jørgensen, then serving in the British Navy.

Acting on behalf of the vessel’s owner, an English soap manufacturer named Phelps, the pair leased the property at Hafnarstræti 4 and set up shop, blithely ignoring the fact that such activity was, strictly speaking, illegal.

A few weeks later, Jørgensen set sail for England in search of goods with which to trade for Icelandic tallow and cod-liver oil. However, when he returned with Phelps to Iceland on June 21, 1809 aboard the frigate Margaret and Anne, it was with a very different enterprise in mind.

Four days later, the pair arrested the Danish Governor, Count Trampe, and imprisoned him aboard the vessel on which they had arrived, citing as their reasons the somewhat dubious grounds that the Danish authorities had tried to hinder their enterprise. Awarding himself the modest title of Protector of all Iceland and Chief Commander on Land and Sea, Jørgensen set himself up as the country’s sole ruler under British protection, with suitable promises of a national convention and constitution the following year.

Immortalised in Icelandic history as The Dog Days’ King, Jørgensen’s reign, however, would not last long. Setting himself up in suitable style, he appointed himself a bodyguard decked out in dapper green uniforms, and set about designing Iceland’s first flag. This, he decreed, should be a blue banner surmounted with three white cod in the top corner. And so it came to pass that on July 11, 1809 Iceland’s first flag was hoisted above the building where the Dubliner now stands to a thunderous salute from Margaret and Anne’s 11 cannon. And like all good royals, Jørgensen then set off on a grand tour of his new “kingdom.”

Jørgensen’s new “subjects,” however, remained largely indifferent to their self-appointed monarch, and within a few weeks of his return to Reykjavík he found himself confined in chains aboard another British warship on his way to exile in England, and later Tasmania. Peace had returned to Iceland, and Hafnarstræti 4.

Soon after this exciting interlude, the property was purchased by to a wealthy Icelander, Bjarni Sivertsen, who would later play a leading role in the establishment of his country’s fishing industry.

Following a brief period in the hands of Westy Petræus, a Danish merchant who was a driving force in Reykjavík’s growth as a trading centre, the property was purchased in 1822 by Lars Michael Knudsen, younger brother of the luckless Adsen and the proud father of a number of daughters much sought after for their striking beauty.

No more fortunate than his brother, however, Knudsen soon went bankrupt, and in 1830, Hafnarstræti 4 was acquired by another Dane, P. C. Knudtzon. Based in Copenhagen, he was reputed to be the wealthiest merchant in Iceland, with a portfolio of properties that included the buildings in which today house the Tourist Information Centre on Bankastræti and Lækjarbrekka restaurant.

Despite his great wealth, Knutson followed his predecessor into bankruptcy in 1840, and in 1846, Hafnarstræti 4 was purchased by another merchant, Hannes St. Johnsen, who converted the old store into a warehouse, when he built the house wich now stands in 1847. 

 

Son of a bishop and a member of one of Iceland’s most prominent families, St. Johnsen (1809-1885) was, like most of his class at the time, a thrifty man by nature. Cash was in short supply, barter was the common currency, and his warehouse and the land surrounding it were filled with a clutter of fish, butter, wool, nails, ropes, chests, churns, boxes, and a variety of other produce and knick-knacks brought and traded by local fishermen and farmers. Not surprisingly, Hafnarstræti 4 is described in 1870, as a “topsy-turvy, untidy construction totally lacking in any form of planning.”

A highly sociable man by nature, St. Johnsen was known, along with his son, as an excellent singer and lover of music. On retiring in 1870, sold his business to his youngest son, Símon, who began a programme of renovations in 1879 that saw the building take on its present appearance. When Simon died, aged only 36, his elder brother Steingrímur took over for a time, but his bohemian lifestyle proved unsuited to a career in commerce, and he sold it in 1892.

As a new century dawned, another merchant, Gunnar Þorbjörnsson, purchased the properties at what are now Hafnarstræti 4 and Veltusund 1. Among the dazzling range of imported goods on offer at the former was beer, sold until its prohibition in 1915. When Gunnar died in 1923, the business passed to one of his employees, Jón Hjartarson, who ran until 1933, when it became Reykjafoss, a wholesale business selling imported goods and cleaning materials.

In 1926, Hafnarstræti 4 and Veltusund 1 were purchased by a watchmaker, Sigurþór Jónsson, and his partner, Ísleifur Jakobsson, who would own them for the next 44 years. From 1940 –1950, the upper floor of Jónsson’s workshop at Hafnarstræti 4 was home to Baldvin Björnsson, an artist and goldsmith, and his German wife, Martha Clara. The couple ran a restaurant which was a popular meeting place among Reykjavík’s German population during the war years.

In 1970, Hafnarstræti 4 entered its final pre-Dubliner incarnation, when it became a second-hand bookshop. When it re-opened as a pub in 1995, the building and those surrounding it had been a centre of commercial activity for more than two centuries. But the sale of alcohol within its walls is nothing new, as this newspaper report of 1873 clearly shows:

“Anyone who has ever visited Reykjavík will know from personal experience that its stores are not just places to conduct trade, but also to drink. No matter the time of day or season of the year, enter any one of them and it will be packed with men engaged in no business other than the purchase of a bottle or half-bottle, or trying to scrounge one for nothing and drink it at the counter. This they do all day long, wandering from one premises to another and gathering eagerly outside every morning even before the shutters go up to make sure they’re first in the queue for a drink. As if it were not bad enough, they sit there talking all sorts of rubbish, so that you can’t hear yourself speak for their incessant gabbling, shouting, jostling and fighting.”