In 2007 Roni Horn realized Vatnasafn/ Library of Water, a permanent sculptural and community project commissioned by Artangel. It’s located in a former library on a hill overlooking the port in Stykkishólmur, Iceland, a town of about 1,200 people halfway between Reykjavik and the Westfjords.
The centerpiece of Vatnasafn is Water, Selected, for which Horn collected melt water from 24 glaciers across Iceland, and installed it in a constellation of glass columns in the library’s main space. [There are two other components to the library: a text drawing on the floor of the space, and an archive of weather reports.]
The space hosts chess tournaments, community gatherings, and writer residencies. Which matters because the proceeds of the limited edition print Artangel published originally went to support the Vatnasafn programming. The map, annotated with the locations of the 24 glaciers sampled—including the one that had already melted away by the time the project was completed—is an edition of 150. If your main goal is a bargain, then roll your dice with the example coming up for sale next month. If you want to support the arts in Stykkishólmur, give Artangel a ring and see if they have any left.
[Wild bit of Stykkishólmur trivia: it was the childhood home of Sveinn Kristjan Bjarnarsson, who emigrated with his parents to Winnipeg, then North Dakota, who then changed his name to [Edgar] Holger Cahill, temporarily stepped in for Alfred Barr as director of The Museum of Modern Art, and served as director of the Federal Art Project at the WPA, and who married Dorothy Miller, one of MoMA’s most influential curators.
Oh no, it was also the site of a fictitious US Marines landing in the 1986 Tom Clancy novel, Red Storm Rising, about a Soviet attempt to destroy NATO by invading Iceland. I want to know less about this now, please.]