About

Fjara is a six-room retreat set back from the black sand beach east of Vík, where the Atlantic arrives with nothing to stop it since Antarctica. The rooms are arranged in a staggered line behind a thick earth berm, so that every bed looks out to the sea stacks while the wind passes overhead. Walls are built from dark concrete mixed with crushed basalt from the beach, ground and polished on the inside to a soft sheen. A shared hall with a single fireplace forms the end of the line, its roof folding down to the dunes. Guests arrive on foot along a boardwalk through the lyme grass, leaving cars and noise a few hundred metres behind.