If sculpture is more your thing, particularly if you've already seen the man's house up on Freyjugata, you'll want to check out the domed Ásmundur Sveinsson museum (daily: May– Sept 10am–4pm; Oct– April 1–4pm; 500kr; www.listasafnreykjavikur.is), part of the Reykjavík art museum, at Sigtún, a ten-minute dog-leg walk from Höfði; first head east along Sæbraut, then south into Kringlumýrarbraut and east again into Sigtún where you'll see the peculiar white igloo shape beyond the trees on your right hand side.

Ásmundur Sveinsson (1893–1982) was one of the pioneers of Icelandic sculpture, and his powerful, often provocative, work was inspired by his country's nature and literature. During the 1920s he studied in both Stockholm at the State Academy and in Paris, returning to Iceland to develop his unique sculptural cubism, a style infused with Icelandic myth and legend, which you can view here at his former home that he designed and built with his own hands in 1942–50. Look also at his soft-edged, gently curved monuments to the ordinary working people of the country in the grounds of the museum, many of which once stood outside his house in Freyjugata. In case you're wondering why the museum assumes such an uncommon shape for Reykjavík, it's because when Ásmundur planned it, he was experimenting with Mediterranean and North African themes, drawing particular inspiration from the domed houses common to Arabic countries. Inside, a couple of stark white rooms contain more examples of the sculptor's work, including several busts from his period of Greek influence, but the original of his most famous sculpture, Sæmundur on the Seal, is not on display here but, appropriately, stands outside the main university building on Suðurgata. It shows one of the first Icelanders to receive a university education, the priest and historian Sæmundur Sigfússon (1056–1133), astride a seal, psalter in hand.