Ingólfsskáli Viking Restaurant

Ingólfsskáli Viking Restaurant is a Viking-themed restaurant located at Efstaland in Ölfus, South Iceland, at the foot of Ingólfsfjall and around ten minutes by car from Selfoss. The restaurant developed from a family business established by Björn Kristjánsson and Svava Gunnarsdóttir, who converted the farm’s barn and cowshed into a restaurant in 1984. The distinctive Viking longhouse was constructed in 1998 and named after Ingólfur Arnarson, traditionally regarded as Iceland’s first permanent Norse settler, who is said to have spent a winter near Ingólfsfjall before continuing west and establishing his settlement at Reykjavík. The large turf-covered building was designed as a recreation of a Viking Age longhouse, with a timber interior, exposed roof beams, wooden carvings, shields, animal hides and other Norse-inspired decoration. Ingólfsskáli was badly damaged during the South Iceland earthquakes of 2008, when the movement of the ground distorted the floor and damaged parts of the timber structure, but the longhouse was subsequently repaired and rebuilt.

Ingólfsskáli Viking Restaurant has appeared in The Flight Attendant (2020–2022). The interior and exterior of the Viking longhouse are featured in the third episode of the second season, “The Reykjavík Ice Sculpture Festival Is Lovely This Time of Year”, during Cassie Bowden’s trip to Iceland in search of her former colleague Megan Briscoe.

In The Flight Attendant, Ingólfsskáli Viking Restaurant is where Cassie Bowden and Shane Evans have dinner after unexpectedly encountering each other in Iceland. Cassie has secretly travelled to Reykjavík while attempting to locate Megan, while Shane, who works alongside her as a flight attendant but is also an undercover CIA agent, immediately becomes suspicious of why she is there. Outside the restaurant, Cassie attempts to maintain her cover by claiming that she has heard the place serves the best sheep’s head in Iceland. Shane calls her bluff and suggests that they eat there together. Inside the Viking longhouse they are served traditional Icelandic food including hákarl and svið, along with Brennivín, while Shane questions Cassie about her unusual behaviour and her supposedly coincidental journey to Iceland. Cassie struggles with the food and tries to end the increasingly uncomfortable dinner, only for her credit card to be declined. She then discovers that someone using her financial information has bought items including rope, tape and tarpaulins, furthering her suspicion that the woman impersonating her is preparing another murder. The production made extensive use of Ingólfsskáli’s existing wooden interior and Viking decoration rather than constructing the restaurant on a soundstage. Production designer Nina Ruscio later explained that the restaurant was discovered while scouting locations outside Reykjavík and that elements of the script were adapted around the unusually elaborate Viking-themed setting.

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