Olavsvik

Ólafsvík lies on the northern shore of the Snæfellsnes peninsula in western Iceland, near the ice-capped volcano of Snæfellsjökull. Its harbor looks toward the broad waters of Breiðafjörður. The Danish authorities licensed Ólafsvík as a trading place in 1687, and in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries commercial vessels sailed between the settlement and Denmark. Fishing and the exchange of goods tied the coastal settlement to the farms of the peninsula and to ships arriving from across the North Atlantic.