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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how anecdotal memories contribute to place-making and attachment in Reykjavík’s city centre. Focusing on sensory and mnemonic engagements with the urban nature of Lake Tjörnin, it considers how the lake shapes and sustains people’s emotional bonds with the city.

Paper long abstract

Lake Tjörnin is a defining landmark in Reykjavík’s city centre. Enclosed on three sides by the city’s oldest neighbourhoods—with the historical centre to the north, residential areas ascending on either side, and a small park to the south—the lake functions as a spatial opening within the urban fabric. Its expanse extends the line of sight, offering a widened perspective that embraces both the surrounding townscape and, beyond it, the mountains outside the city. Animated by birdlife and vegetation lining its banks, Tjörnin has long served as a place of pause and recreation, offering momentary relief from the surrounding urban environment.

This paper explores how sensory encounters and the anecdotes that emerge from them contribute to place-making and attachment in this area of urban nature. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted between 2022 and 2024—including video-recorded in situ group sessions and self-guided solo walks—the analysis situates these accounts within discussions of affective geography, phenomenology of place, and vernacular heritage. It examines how sensory and mnemonic engagements with Tjörnin—and its daily and seasonal rhythmic changes in light, weather, vegetation, birdlife, and the cultural life of the city—mediate relations between people, memory, and environment. Anecdotal memories of minor incidents, remembered privately or with peers and retold across generations, function as everyday heritage practices that embed personal recollection within shared narrative traditions. The paper argues that such sensory impressions and narrative practices transform Tjörnin into a storied landscape, sustaining an ecological connection, emotional continuity, and belonging amid urban change.