Maritime education

The first seamen's school in Iceland was founded in Ísafjörður in 1852 and was run for four years. Owners of decked vessels in the West Fjords founded the school. Increased fishing with schooners from the West Fjords called for trained skippers. Captain Torfi Halldórsson was the school principal. He had recently returned from studies in maritime navigation in Denmark. There were ten students in the school during the first winter, all except one from the West Fjords. The Seamen's School in Ísafjörður was the country's first technical college and the first school to be founded in the West Fjords.

The Seamen's School in Ísafjörður was founded later#. The school was open during the winters from shortly after 1920 until 1940. A sailing and navigation course run by the Navigation School in Reykjavik took its place. This course awarded rights to sail smaller fishing vessels. The Fisheries Association of Iceland held engine courses for the fleet's ship engineers from the year 1916. Training for navigators and ship engineers was later transferred to the Ísafjörður Technical College.

Detail

Torfi Halldórsson was born in 1823 and brought up in Dýrafjörður. He was captain on the decked boat, Bogi from Önundarfjörður before the age of thirty. In 1851 Torfi went to Denmark to study sailing at Flensborg. The following spring he sailed home in his own cutter and settled in Ísafjörður. At the same time another young cutter captain, Ásgeir Ásgeirsson, was finding his feet in commerce and fisheries in Ísafjörður. At the initiative of Ásgeir and of other owners of decked boats Torfi was appointed head of the Seamen's School in the autumn of 1852. Four years later Torfi moved to Flateyri and settled there. He was involved in fisheries, farming and commerce in Flateyri for many years, mostly in cooperation with the merchant Hjálmar Jónsson. Torfi Halldórsson died Flateyri in 1906.