Embassy of the United Kingdom, Reykjavík first British Embassy was Höfði (best known as the location for the 1986 Reykjavík Summit meeting of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev). In the 1950s the Embassy was moved to its current location on Laufásvegur street. In 1968, the British Government bought Laufásvegur 31 and the old farmhouse which was there was donated to the Reykjavik Museum and moved to the heritage site at Árbæjarsafn. When the Embassy was redeveloped in the 1990s, it was decided that the location was too large for Britain's needs and so it looked for another partner to share it with. At the same time
History of the foreign relations of the United Kingdom the time hostilities began on 17 January 1991. Thatcher was one of the first Western leaders to respond warmly to reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Following Reagan–Gorbachev summit meetings and reforms enacted by Gorbachev in the USSR, she declared in November 1988 that "We're not in a Cold War now", but rather in a "new relationship much wider than the Cold War ever was". She went on a state visit to the Soviet Union in 1984 and met with Gorbachev and Nikolai Ryzhkov, the Chairman of the Council of Ministers. Thatcher was initially opposed to German reunification, telling Gorbachev that