The people
With a shared admiration for the Icelandic sheep, Hulda Brynjólfsdóttir and Tyrfingur Sveinsson began Uppspuni Mini Mill in 2017, bringing together Hulda’s passion for wool, and Tyrfingur’s passion for machinery.
Tyrfingur is a mechanic, guild master, and metal-work teacher, born and raised in the countryside doing general farm work as well as machine repair.
The Place
Lækjartún is a medium sized farm in the South of Iceland, approximately 20 minutes from Selfoss. (or an hour from Reykjavík)
Everyday we feel blessed to farm this land. With stunning views to the mountains (we can see seven volcanoes on a clear day) in the surrounding horizon, and overlooking Þjórsá (the longest river in Iceland) from our livingroom window, our daily farm work is deeply embedded in awe and respect for the beauty of this place.
As the land cares for us, we care for it, continually researching farming practices that enhance the health, beauty, and productivity of the land and all of us that depend on it. Using NO chemicals or poison in our farming is a rule making our food also as clean and nourishing as possible.
The sheep
Since we took over the farm, we have been breeding our Icelandic sheep for high quality wool as well as other qualities we think are essential being a sheep farmer and breeder,- and yes, they all have names!
We believe the heart of the Icelandic sheep lives in the highlands, that is where they feel their best, and so we take our sheep to their highland range every summer. When you find the occasional small bit of grass in our yarn, it is the story of the sheep’s summer adventure. In the winter, we care for them in our barn, feeding them hay grown on our farm during the summer. We are the first farm in Iceland to adopt regenerative farming practices – an approach that strives to restore and build the health of the farm ecosystem, rather than simply extract from it. ‘We are what we eat’, and the same goes for sheep, meaning our sheep produce an incredibly high standard of wool because they graze on diverse, healthy pastures (that require no artificial fertilisers, pesticides, or herbicides).
The mill
While Uppspuni is the first mini mill established in Iceland, we draw on a long tradition of wool work over many hundreds of years. Not only in Iceland, but in the world.
We started the mill to give Icelandic wool growers more options for creating value from their beautiful sheep. Before Uppspuni, farmers had two main options: Sell their fleeces to ÍSTEX, or send them overseas to be spun into yarn, then ship the yarn back.
But we wanted farmers to have a third option – to have their fleeces spun into yarn here in Iceland, knowing that they would get the yarn back from their own sheep. They can even have the name of the sheep included and know exactly what sheep the yarn came from.
The mill has enabled many Icelandic sheep farmers to generate additional farm income by selling their own yarn directly to the public and we are honoured to serve our farming community in this way.
The wool
We produce high-quality, 100% authentic Icelandic yarns from our own sheep, bred for their wool quality.
Out of respect for the sheep and the incredible properties of wool fibre, we are passionate about our no-waste approach to wool. We developed six different yarn types to utilise different fleece characteristics, and any fleece not suitable for yarn, is processed for felting projects or fertilising compost in our farm gardens.
