[1] The town's name means garden or yard, after one of the many earthen walls once erected on the boundaries between local properties.

[2] Garður was mentioned in the Book of Settlement when Ingólfur Arnarson, the first settler in Iceland, gave his cousin Steinunn Gamla this area of land.

[3] The rich fishing grounds by the shore remain the town's economic base.

A great deal of fishing was carried out here in earlier centuries, and there are relics to be found along the shore.

The old Garðskagi Lighthouse [ˈkarðsˌskaijɪ] was built in 1897 and was used until recently as a centre for studying the thousands of migrating birds which arrive there from Greenland and North America every year to breed on the surrounding shore.