Reykjavik cemetery question?

Question:Hólavallagareur Cemetery - Old cemetery with beautiful, yet spooky setting. Can anyone tell me about its history or if there are any famous people in it?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Hólavallagareur Cemetery - Old cemetery with beautiful, yet spooky setting. Can anyone tell me about its history or if there are any famous people in it?

This is all I found in english:

According to documents on the cemetery's dedication in 1838, it was actually named "Hólavallagareur," that is for Hólavellir rather than the street Sueurgata. By 1932 the cemetery property was exhausted, with only reserved plots still available, so that since then and in the coming years only such sites are being used. As paragraph 25 of law no. 36 from 1993 states, surviving spouses have the right to demand sites beside their partners, if possible. No exact figures tell the number of reserved sites; however, burials are steadily decreasing. Confer more details on cemetery history in the book Minningarm?rk í Hólavallagarei.

Bj?rn Th. Bj?rnsson, art scholar, wrote the book Minningarm?rk í Hólavallagarei in 1988, when the cemetery by Sueurgata was celebrating its 150th birthday. Minningarm?rk might be translated as "marks of remembrance," Bj?rn calling the cemetery the "largest and oldest museum in Reykjavík," where "a living exhibition and history opens itself to anyone who can read the hand of the sculptor and discern from symbols and types of font the thoughts and deeds of the dead."

The book describes how Icelanders used to believe that the first person to be buried in a new cemetery would become its "guardian." That person's body would not rot, but serve to watch over those arriving later. In this case it was Guerún Oddsdóttir, the latter wife of the magistrate Tóreur Jónassen, who was first buried in the cemetery then associated with Hólavallagareur, later with Sueurgata.

More information, a map and photographs can be found in the link below.