The museum´s main focus is on the influx of modern times around 1880 to 1950. Technical innovations in areas such as mechanics, electricity, communications, shipbuilding, commerce and architecture are interlaced with changes in lifestyle in Seyðisfjörður and in Iceland in general. The exhibitions in the old mechanical workshop and the telegraph station seek to recreate the atmosphere of the times they portray. The museum is located in a historical neighbourhood that has served an important role in the vast modernization of Icelandic society during the decades around 1900.
Many of the machines and tools are still in working use and they provide an opportunity to have workshops as well as an annual festival held every summer in July.
There is a small shop in the library where you can get books, sweets and souvenirs.
JÓHANN HANSSON'S MECHANICAL SHOP 1907
During the first decade of the twentieth century Iceland witnessed dramatic change in everyday life. Numerous shore-based fishing vessels, previously human-powered or wind driven, were motorized and new boats were built with motors. Mechanical shops were established around the country to take care of necessary repairs and maintenence. Vjelasmiðja Jóhanns Hanssonar (est.1907) in Seyðisfjörður was one of the earliest and the very first mechanical shop in East Iceland.
OLD TELEGRAPH STATION(1894)
The old telegraph station, otherwise called Wathneshus, was originally built in 1894 as the residence of Norwegian entrepreneur Otto Wathne. In connection with the laying of the submarine cable from the mainland to Iceland, the Great Nordic Telecommunications Company bought the house and opened the country's first telegraph station on August 25, 1906. The government acquired the house in 1926 and the Post and Telecommunications company gave the town of Seyðisfjörður it as a museum in 1973. It now has exhibitions on the second floor. The exhibition explains the arrival of the telegraph line and how it laid the line to Reykjavik. There are telegraph machines of the old telegraph station as well as object related to the communications through the 20th Century.