Shockingly, three out of four of Heimaey’s babies once died of tetanus, due to water deficiency and contaminated soil. In the 1840s an island woman, Sólveig, was sent abroad to be trained as a midwife. The tiny wooden house Landlyst was Sólveig’s maternity hospital (and is the second-oldest building on the island). Today it contains a retro medicine cabinet, a small display of her blood-letting equipment and other 19th-century paraphernalia.