Keflavíkurkirkja

Keflavíkurkirkja was drawn by Rögnvaldur Ólafsson and consecrated on 14 February 1915; the master builder was Guðni Guðmundsson, a mason. It replaced a timber church that a storm damaged in 1902 before it was finished, and its altar and pulpit were made for that earlier building. The church is concrete and a protected building. It faces the sea, with its altar at the west end, the reverse of the usual Icelandic arrangement. In 1966 and 1967 a chancel was built on and the nave remodelled to drawings by Ragnar Emilsson. Between 2012 and 2020 the architect Páll V. Bjarnason took the nave back towards its original form, and the pulpit and altar rails, removed in those changes, returned to their places. Ásgrímur Jónsson's altarpiece of 1916 shows the Sermon on the Mount in an Icelandic landscape. Marteinn Guðmundsson, a woodcarver from Merkines in Hafnir, carved the oak font in 1945. Björgvin Tómasson built the organ of twenty-five stops, which came into use in 2020.