We had no intention to go into Iceland's rising tourist business. We bought the house and the business in 2017 when it had been running as a hostel for about 10 years.
All we wanted was the house and all we knew was that we would have some kind of business there one day. This is still evolving.
The best thing about our house - is that we get all kinds of people from all over the world to come and stay with us.
The Full Story
Hello and a warm welcome to our site or even better - in person to Gaulverjaskóli - The Old School House.
Our names are Magnea and Greg. Magnea was born and raised in Reykjavík and Greg is from the south coast of England.
We met in London in 1987 and have been together ever since!!
We have lived in London most of the time and raised a couple of awesome kids.
Since 2017 we have been working our full time jobs in London and running The Old School house alongside it with help from many different people/family and friends. We closed the business as a hostel early on and only took bookings from groups hiring the whole house - this was easier to manage from the UK.
But every vacation and spare time we have had, has been spent improving the place to get it nearer to our vision for it.
We as a family have built, painted and planted something every single vacation we have had here.
In 2018 we had the atrium built and in 2021 we laid the courtyard outside and installed the hot-tub.
It is an absolute labour of love.
The exciting news is that we recently left our jobs in London, the kids have kind of left home and at the time of writing (Feb 2024) we are travelling in India and Sri Lanka for two months. Staying in other people's guesthouses, learning yoga and doing the blue sky thinking for the future.
Getting ourselves ready to be spending bigger chunks of our time in Iceland running our business!
Now, this allows us to open the rooms to be booked in between the group bookings.
Mission
The mission is LOVE. Do what we love.
Then everything becomes fun!
Its as simple as that.
Trusting what we like doing - other people will experience and enjoy
We then better clarify what we actually love :)
To garden, plant and grow
To design, create and build our spaces
To always listen to music
To spend time with people
To go fishing
To cook good food
To exercise
To read and travel
To appreciate art
To be in harmony with nature
Vision
Gosh, the ideas are many and the vision is big!
Bricks and Mortar kind of stuff: We are hoping to be building a large lounge / multi functional room for guests attached to the kitchen house in the near future. There will be a further WC/Shower room.
Near the hot-tub we envisage a cold tub, an outside shower and a sauna.
We also want to add three private self contained cabins on our land.
Finally a polytunnel for growing vegetables.
Concepts: Ultimately we want the place to be one of happiness, fun and education in whatever form that takes.
We have ideas of multitude of retreats, volunteer tree planting work, music gatherings, art exhibitions etc.
This is all doable - but will take time to implement.
Gaulverjaskóli Iceland