Early in 1995 an old acquaintance of the late Ingólfur Kristjánsson dropped by to visit and asked him if he thought it would be time to do something with all the items that had been slowly accumulating through time around his workshop.
That idea kept brewing and finally in July 1998 we first broke ground to build the first showroom for the "Samgönguminjasafnið Ystafelli". After that it was impossible to back out so two years later, in 2000, the museum was opened.
It was obvious quite fast that there was great interest for the museum and the first showroom was filled immediately and it became clear that another showroom was needed to house the incredible amount of museum artifacts that we have received. The first drawings to the new house arrived in our hands in December 2002 and Ingólfur passed away in February 2003 and his wife Kristbjörg died in April that very same year, so we can say that they were able to see their dream become a reality. The showroom number two was opened in 2006, but that year the visitor count had already reached 20.000 guests since it was opened in the year 2000.
Our main goal is to not create debt, and that has been possible mainly because of priceless and selfless help from family, friends and well-wishers of the museum. It has now been 12 years since the second showroom was opened and despite a lot of work has been done in that time to keep the museum maintained it has started to show wear and tear on the housing inside and out from the constant flow of museum guests both Icelandic and foreign.
