Reykjavík Junior College

The gray stone building with the steep, dark roof is Menntaskólinn í Reykjavík. It has served as Iceland's oldest educational institution since eighteen forty-six, when it moved here from a smaller town. Students still attend classes in these rooms, following a tradition that stretches back to the episcopal school at Skálholt in the eleventh century. Halldór Laxness, who eventually won the Nobel Prize in Literature, famously quit his studies here in nineteen nineteen after a disagreement with the school's faculty.