Cairn building craze at Reykjavik's Harpa concert hall
Cairns, man-made piles of stones have been making a rapid appearance on the shoreline below Harpa concert hall and conference centre at the heart of Reykjavik. Tourists began building them early this year and since then they're multiplying very fast.
Building cairns was an old custom in Iceland in older times when people used them as road markers across the highlands, before the age of cars.
Recent cairn building by tourists has been noted mostly at Þingvellir in South Iceland. Farmers tore the ones in their land down saying it interfered with the natural landscape.
Cairn building at Þingvellir national park and all other nature reserves in Iceland is strictly forbidden.
Iceland Monitor spotted this family of tourists building a cairn on a sunny spring day at Harpa Concert Hall at the small man made beach east of the building.
