Daginn everyone! This is an icelandic greeting the translation of which means “day” and is something we quickly adopted from our working place in Reykjavík because we heard it just everywhere. On July 15th we were welcomed with exactly this kind greeting at the Reykjavík Art Museum, where we did our internship.

This museum is split into three different locations. The main building Hafnarhús (contemporary art) is the busiest and most exciting place, with always changing, interesting exhibitions. Kjarvalsstaðir (modern art) has an incredible environment and a calming atmosphere. The little sculpture museum Ásmundarsafn is a little outside of the city and a very quiet and underrated part of the museum.

Our main tasks included communication with visitors, sitting in the galleries and selling tickets at the reception. From time to time we also helped in the museum stores or down in the storage rooms. Sadly, we learned pretty quickly that Iceland is surprisingly unorganized. They didn’t really know what to do with us or what kind of meaningful tasks they could give us, even though they had already had multiple interns from our school in previous years. For this reason, particularly the first few weeks were pretty confusing and boring, but then things  improved quickly. Our co-workers were the best part of the whole experience, because they were just so nice, helpful and warmly open. We became quite close with some of them and they gave us a great insight into how the locals perceive their country/city. For example, I would never have thought that Iceland had such a great ice-cream culture! Moreover, they recommended places to visit and even organized free participation in an event of the museum for us.