Spilavin at Hotel Hvolsvöllur

For the last three years we have gone to Hvolsvöllur, Iceland and played board games for whole weekend in the winter. And now we're doing it for the fourth time! A little later in the year, it's going to be "spring" (yeah, Icelandic spring. Wait for it ...) The retreat will run from April 4th through 6th.

Spilavin (Icelandic translation of Board Game Retreat) is an event where participants meet to play board games over a whole weekend (or part of it). We encourage you to bring your own games but we also have quite an exstensive collection where you can play from.

The event is quite casual with one change from previous years. The hotel is going to offer us a buffet style lunch and dinner on top of a-la-carté menu. You can choose to have an all-inclusive stay or pay for the buffet seperatley.

You can stay for one or two nights or just come and play and drive home in the evening, whatever suits you. Accomodation options are below.

The ticket price is 10.000ISK (approx €66 or $69), whether you stay at the hotel or not. Included are soft drinks, snacks and candy during the day. You are not allowed to bring your own alcohol into the common areas but the hotel offers 20% discount at the bar!

Signup sheet and payment information can be found here

• Single occupancy: 15.900kr
• Double occupancy: 17.900kr
• Triple occupancy:  21.900kr

10% discount if you stay for two nights!

Attention: Your accommodation is paid directly to the hotel, at arrival

Room and Board (priced per individual, per night)

• One night: 13.900kr
• Two nights: 26.400kr

Extra fee, 6.000ISK pr. night if you require a single occupancy room.

Included is breakfast, light lunch and buffet-style dinner.

Attention: Your accommodation and board is paid directly to the hotel, at arrival

Breakfast buffet is included with your stay, wether you choose room and board or only room.

If you choose full board it will include light lunch buffet with soup, home made bread and sandwitches. If you choose to pay for the lunch buffet seperatley, the price is 1.900ISK

For appetiser: Soup of the day and home made bread

Main courses include meetballs, chicken stew, pork gullash, chicken legs, chicken curry or chicken breast. Served with potatoes, rice, vegetables or pasta.

For desert: Crème Brûlée, Caramel Panna Cotta or cake.

You can choose between appertiser and main course or main course and desert. Price for buffet if you did not include it in your room is 3.900ISK.

Even though participants bring their own games to the retreat we also bring in an evergrowing board collection for you to enjoy free of charge. The plan is to bring 250 games at least! As you can see on the picture we have quite a selection of "Big Box" versions and often have our games upgraded components.

And we have quite few playmats too ;-)

This year we're going to offer a special shelf, seperated from the board game collection, where you can bring your own games to sell. You just bring your game, put a sticker on it with price and contact info and leave it on the shelve. Then people can browse through it throughout the retreat.

We've done this quite unformally over the years and there is always quite the flow of buying and selling. 

Since 1984, Hotel Hvolsvöllur has offered friendly and welcoming accommodation for all travelers. The Hotel is located centrally in the town of Hvolsvöllur in Rangarthing Eystra municipality. Since the hotel's opening in 1984, it has been expanded twice, first in 1998, and in 2007.

With the expansion of the hotel in 2007, 26 rooms were added, and today the hotel has a total of 66 rooms. There are 22 triple, 32 double and 8 single rooms. There are also 3 quadruple family rooms, which also function as junior suites.