Akureyri Toy Museum百科及旅行攻略

Friðbjarnarhús in Akureyri in winter. Photo: Dagvidur, CC BY-SA 4.0

The Akureyri Toy Museum (Leikfangasýningin í Friðbjarnarhúsi) is a small museum of twentieth-century toys inside Friðbjarnarhús, a listed timber house at Aðalstræti 46 in Innbærinn, the old town at the southern end of Akureyri in North Iceland.

The house name means "Friðbjörn's house", after the bookbinder and town councillor Friðbjörn Steinsson, whose home it was. The Toy Museum is run by the Akureyri Museum (Minjasafnið á Akureyri), whose main building stands a few doors along the same street.

Key Takeaways About Leikfangasýningin í Friðbjarnarhúsi

• Twentieth-century toy collection (founded by Guðbjörg Ringsted) inside Friðbjarnarhús, a listed 1856 timber house in Innbærinn, Akureyri
• Iceland's first Good Templar lodge was founded in this house on 10 January 1884; the lodge room upstairs is preserved
• Open daily 11:00–17:00 June–August only; groups by arrangement year-round; reopens June 2027
• Entry on the Akureyri Museum combined ticket (2,800 ISK adults 2026, under-18s free), valid at all seven sites for a year
• About 2 km (20–25 min) walk south of the town centre; Nonni's House and the Akureyri Museum about 100 m away

Why visit the Akureyri Toy Museum

The museum packs two stories into one modest building. The toy collection founded by Guðbjörg Ringsted fills the house: dolls, toy cars, cardboard board games, puppets and action figures, most of them from the twentieth century and some more than a hundred years old.

Children recognise things their grandparents played with; adults tend to find at least one toy they owned. The displays are low-key and close at hand, which suits the dollhouse scale of the place.

The building itself is the second story. Friðbjarnarhús was built in 1856 by the blacksmith Steinn Kristjánsson and his wife Guðný Kráksdóttir, and later passed to their son Friðbjörn Steinsson (1838–1918), a bookbinder, bookseller and member of the town council for forty years.

On 10 January 1884, twelve people met in his living room to found Ísafold no. 1, the first lodge of the Independent Order of Good Templars (IOGT) in Iceland. The temperance movement went on to shape Icelandic social life and politics for decades, so this small room has an outsized place in national history.

The lodges bought the house in 1961, and master carpenter Sverrir Hermannsson, who restored many of Akureyri's old houses, returned it to its nineteenth-century form. The upstairs lodge meeting room is set out as it was in the movement's first years. The house is protected as a listed building.

Innbærinn around it is the oldest part of Akureyri, a short street of timber houses from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries between the fjord and the wooded slope.

Nonni's House, the childhood home of the children's author Jón Sveinsson, and the Akureyri Museum with its garden and church are about a hundred metres away, so the Toy Museum fits naturally into an afternoon of old-town museums.

How to get to the Akureyri Toy Museum

Friðbjarnarhús from Aðalstræti. Photo: Dagvidur, CC BY-SA 4.0

Friðbjarnarhús is at Aðalstræti 46, 600 Akureyri. From the town centre (Ráðhústorg and Hafnarstræti), walk south along the fjord for just under 2 kilometres, roughly 20 to 25 minutes on foot; Aðalstræti is the continuation of the main street into the old town.

Driving, follow Drottningarbraut south along the shore and turn into Aðalstræti. Parking is on the street along Aðalstræti and by the Akureyri Museum at number 58 (check the signs). Akureyri Airport is about a kilometre further south.

Akureyri is on Route 1 (the Ring Road), about 385 kilometres from Reykjavík, which is a drive of around five and a half hours without stops, or a domestic flight of about 45 minutes. Nothing about the approach needs a 4x4; it is a town street.

Best time to visit

The Toy Museum is a summer museum. It opens daily from 11:00 to 17:00 from June to August and is closed to drop-in visitors for the rest of the year, though prebooked groups can be arranged year-round through the Akureyri Museum.

The 2026 season has ended and the Akureyri Museum's website states that the Toy Museum opens again in June 2027; check its opening-hours page for the exact dates before you travel. A grey or rainy afternoon is as good a time as any, since everything is indoors and the other old-town museums are a two-minute walk away.

Safety and practical tips

• Admission is by the Akureyri Museum combined ticket, which covers all seven of its museums, among them the Akureyri Museum, Nonni's House, the Industrial Museum, Davíð's House, Laufás and the Toy Museum, and is valid for a year. For 2026 the museum lists it at 2,800 ISK for adults, 2,200 ISK for seniors, 2,400 ISK per person for groups of ten or more, and free for children under 18.
• The house is small, with steep stairs to the upper floor and a flight of outdoor steps from the street. Expect to carry pushchairs.
• Allow 30 to 45 minutes, longer with children who want to look at everything.
• The Akureyri Museum at Aðalstræti 58 is the main building, with the shop and information desk; Friðbjarnarhús is a small house with few facilities of its own.
• Contact: Minjasafnið á Akureyri, minjasafnid@minjasafnid.is.