Arriving in Selfoss from Reykjavik, you cross over the Olfusa River and take an immediate left turn at the roundabout to continue on the N1 Icelandic Ring Road towards Vik. This is Austurvegur, and you are looking for number 21. After a couple of hundred yards, immediately opposite the impressive Landsbankinn building, you cross the road and park. You have arrived at The Bobby Fischer Center.
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| The Bobby Fischer Center, Selfoss |
The Museum is open for three hours a day in the summer months, between mid-May and mid-September, but this is February, so I (plus a reluctant Mrs Club Organiser) am being admitted by special request at 11.00 for a private viewing, thanks to a very nice lady, Aldis, who is a member of the Center's Executive Board. We are early - there can be no question of missing this appointment! - and right on time Aldis arrives to let us into the Museum. The entrance is on the north side of the building at the western end, where some steps, a door and another flight of stairs lead to the first floor which the Centre shares with the Selfoss Chess Club. How inspirational a venue this must be! Below are a couple of shops selling who knows what (I think one was a florist), but business was not exactly brisk while we waited!
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| The Stairway to Heaven |
The Museum is - apparently - one of only three in the world devoted to an individual chess player, the others being for Max Euwe (Holland) and Emmanuel Lasker (Germany).
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| So nearly there....... |
The Museum is very light and spacious, and contains a surprisingly large amount of memorabilia relating to Bobby's chess career - especially the 1972 World Championship Match, of course - and his later Iceland years from 2005. There are photos, magazine covers, newspaper articles, cartoons, original and facsimile score sheets for Fischer games, coins, medals and much more. A TV monitor plays an old BBC documentary about Bobby, that I have to confess I was not aware of. And Aldis gives a very interesting and informative presentation of Bobby's life, and especially about his later years and the founding of the Centre.
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| Inside the Bobby Fischer Center |
The centrepiece (should that be centerpiece?) is a replica of the chess table on which the 1972 match was played. The original is in the National Museum of Iceland, but regrettably is not on display. (Which explains why I did not visit the National Museum of Iceland.) The table was signed by both the players after the Match, and the curators are concerned that these will fade if displayed. You might think this was not an insuperable problem, but I couldn't possibly comment!
The most poignant exhibit is also the most banal. Five very second-hand paperbacks that Bobby ordered at Bokin, but which he never lived to collect.
And then, after just over an hour, its over. I could have stayed all day, but both Aldis and Mrs Club Organiser had other things to do. I don't suppose I will ever be in Selfoss again, so that was a once in a lifetime experience. What a massive vote of thanks is owed by chess fans the world over to a few determined people who founded, developed and now run this amazing place. I imagine the Chess Hall of Fame in Saint Louis is ten times glitzier, but I'm sorry Rex, I find it hard to imagine that it could begin to compare with the profundity of the Selfoss experience. And I doubt it could compete in the T shirt stakes!
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| Coming soon to a Thursday evening at The Gauntlet |
So there you have it. A whole Museum devoted to Bobby, in a small town of less than 7,000 people in the Icelandic interior. But why there? Why Selfoss? A place he never visited, and with which he had no connections.* The answer, of course, is because this is where Bobby Fischer is buried. So I'm warning you now, to get your handkerchiefs ready. Because the next stage in my pilgrimage is to the grave site, ánd if you think I've been maudlin and sentimental already, you ain't seen nothing yet.
But first another of our lesser known Fischer games. And what could it possibly be, except for the game on the T shirt!!
* This may well be incorrect. In his 2012 book Bobby Fischer Comes Home, Helgi Olafsson writes: "According to Gardar [Sverrison] Bobby wished to be buried in the small Catholic cemetery of Laugardaelir church, outside the small town of Selfoss. Bobby had been there with Gardar and his family a few times and allegedly he had said at one point that he could imagine finding his last resting place in this quiet surroundings. Did Bobby instruct Gardar that he wanted to be buried at Laugardaelakirkja? For me this is hard to accept. Bobby was not prepared to die and it was not in his nature to plan anything of such importance ahead. You could not even order a table in a restaurant in advance."
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