Vegahandbókin

The Vegahandbókin - vísað til vegar is a comprehensive road guide to Iceland .

On each page in the map section, sections of the route with a length of around 20 km are described. As an example, the sections of the ring road are 7 to 44 km long. About half the side shows the course of the road, next to it the description of the points of interest. Because of this division, a north arrow shows the direction. In addition to information about the landscape, the text often contains information about people who lived or worked on the farms there and are hardly known outside of Iceland. Places are named that are said to have been haunted in the past, or landscapes that are said to have been densely populated in the past, without giving any numbers.

history

The first Icelandic edition was published in 1973 by Örn og Örlygur hf on 456 pages. It was printed in three colors: red for the streets, blue for the water and black for the landscape. The book had no continuous page numbers, but was numbered according to chapters, which result from the numbering of the streets .

The first German-language edition appeared in 1988 as Iceland Road Guide with 374 pages. At that time the fourth Icelandic edition was due to appear and there were already three editions in English. This edition also included a description of the highland slopes. The black color was replaced by brown in the map display.

The second German-language edition was published in the summer of 1996 as Island Atlas on 448 pages, now by Íslenska Bókaútgáfan. An Icelandic and an English edition appeared at the same time in the form that still exists today. This edition appeared in four-color print with photos in the description and, for the first time, with a place directory, in addition to the street directory that was already available in the other editions.