Has been working on Christmas Eve for 25 years

As the church bells ring in Christmas at six o’clock today, on Christmas Eve, Ástbjörn Egilsson is at work in Reykjavík Cathedral as he has done at this time every year since 1999. “It’s wonderful to be in church on Christmas Eve, as it is on all days,” he says. “It’s a good community and it gets even better on big holidays like Christmas and Easter.”

The Cathedral’s churchwarden handles the finances, prepares the accounts for the accountant, ensures that maintenance is done and is effectively the managing director. Egilsson was the churchwarden and managing director of the parish committee from 1999 to 2014 and has been involved in the church ever since.

“I step in when there’s a need,” he says and adds that in previous years, people with influence in the church, often merchants or civil servants, were hired to take care of the church service.

The church servicer's job includes preparing the church for mass and ensuring with the priests that the setting is right each time, setting up hymn numbers and being there. He welcomes guests and also acts as a helper. "I sit at the front, get up and sit down at the right time." Egilsson says that the evening carol on Christmas Eve always runs smoothly, as tradition is paramount. "The work is very easy on this day."

The church is my home

Egilsson has been a widower for over four years, but his wife Elín Sæmundsdóttir was often among the guests in the Cathedral on Christmas Eve. Their daughter Agla and her husband Haraldur Örn Jónsson sing in the Cathedral choir and have done so for years. “We often went to their place for dinner after the festive mass and then I went back to work because of the mass that started at midnight,” he says. He adds that in the early years there were four masses on Christmas Eve. German mass at two o’clock, Danish at four o’clock, evening carols and then midnight mass. Now there are Danish mass and evening carols that day and a sacred hour at 11:30 pm. “If there was a lot of wet snow outside at St Thorlakur Mass, I had to show up before noon on Christmas Eve and wash the floors. Then the day was long in church but I always felt good.”

After being a messenger at the newspaper Vísir, Egilsson went to study printing and worked for about 15 years as a printer. “It was a fun job and I was one of the first to switch to offset printing at Kassagerðin.” The couple then took over the operation of grocery stores in Reykjavík and Grindavík for a total of about 13 years. Then they ran a clothing store in Reykjavík and Egilsson was the manager of the Gamli bærinn and sales manager at Ísspor before he decided to move to the Cathedral. "I've been around a lot, but the church is my home."