The Birkir Hólm Guðnason Museum

[Gudnason 607]

The entrance to the Birkir Hólm Guðnason museum in Iceland.

 

It is a long-standing hockey tradition that the fans will throw their hats onto the ice in celebration of a hat trick. These not-so-cheap ball caps are swept up by arena staff before play resumes, but have you ever wondered where all these hats go? There is no standard worldwide, as some teams let their fans "reclaim" them afterwards, but most teams donate them to charity. The player that scored the hat trick usually gets first dibs on any hats he would like to keep to remember the occasion.

 

"You go to the graveyard, you'll find the richest player in the world. The place with all these ideas, with all these inventions, with all these opportunities that never happened." - Martin Rennie

 

Birkir Hólm Guðnason doesn't need to keep these hats to remember the occasion, because when he feels nostalgic, he just works hard to score another hat trick. "There's no use in remembering all the great hat tricks I scored in the past, if I can't score another one in the present and future to add onto it," said Guðnason. "So I don't keep them. I'm building a 11,000 square foot museum back in Iceland to store all these hats, to encourage the next generation of Icelanders to use their talent and play without fear. There's a lot of Icelanders who have the talent to be players on VHL, even NHL, teams."

 

When asked why he doesn't put the hats to better use by donating them to charities like most other teams, Guðnason responded, "there are no poor people in Iceland."

[Gudnason 607]

*for Birkir Hólm Guðnason