Described as a dreamboat, or an ode to the Sun, the Sun Voyager (in Icelandic: ‘Sólfar’) is a sculpture by Jón Gunnar Árnason, located next to the Sæbraut road in Reykjavík, Iceland. The artist intended it to convey the promise of undiscovered territory, a dream of hope, progress and freedom. In 1986, Árnason’s Sun Voyager won a competition for a new outdoor sculpture to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the city of Reykjavík: the full-sized Sun Voyager was eventually unveiled on Sæbraut on the birthday of the city of Reykjavík, 18 August 1990. The work is constructed of stainless steel and stands on a circle of granite slabs surrounded by so-called “town-hall concrete”. It was constructed in accordance with Árnason’s enlarged full-scale drawing of Sun Voyager and was overseen by his assistant, the artist Kristin E. Hrafnsson. The engineering of the sculpture was supervised by the technologist Sigurjón Yngvason, in close cooperation with Árnason himself, the construction was carried out by Reynir Hjálmtýsson and his assistant. In an interview published in the newspaper Þjóðviljinn on 11 June 1987, Árnason described the genesis of the work as being part of the Scandinavian art project ‘Experimental Environment’, which conducted various artistic experiments in Iceland, Denmark and other places in the 1980s.
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