Click on the video of waterfalls, volcanos, glaciers, geysers, fumaroles, crags, fjords, canyons, peaks, wind, black sand, puffins, harbors, etc. all in the fascinating realm that is Iceland.
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Always the wind
It’s always about the wind. Iceland’s drizzle is manageable without the wind. But when the gale starts the tiny droplets morph into menacing arrows that whip your body and pierce your face, trying to knock you to the ground and howling to your fruitless efforts to find any sort of protection outside. The wind is the king in Iceland and flights are delayed or diverted based on its whims. Our flight to Vienna was also delayed …17 hours. We were placed on a morning flight to Paris whose plane was shaking so hard while on the tarmac that we thought it would be impossible to leave. But it seems that the Icelandair pilots know how to appease the “Wind God” of Iceland because the take-off was one of the smoothest we experienced.
Snaefellsnes
Snæfellsnes translates as Snow Mount’s Peninsula, and it is a long peninsula close to Reykjavik having a volcano crowned by a glacier on its tip. It’s an easy access from the city and represents a sort of collection of what Iceland has to offer gathered in a smaller area.
Lóndrangar or the Rocky Castle is formed by two impressive pinnacles the result of a past eruption, that in the local tradition are considered trolls, a man troll and his wife.
Kirkjufell Mountain was made famous by its depiction in Game of Thrones. It is a 463 m mountain that seen from a particular angle seems to be triangular. We would have liked to go and climb it but the we reached it during another “horizontal rain” with gusty winds so we settled only for a picture from the nearby Grundarfjörður town from where it looks much wider, with more of a trapezium shape.
Not far is a nice gorge with a waterfall inside, Rauofeldsgia. In order to explore it you need to step on stones in the waterfall to advance inside of it. But you may need waterproof gear to go further. From inside the gorge the sky is a spash of blue through the rocks above.
With so many volcanos on the peninsula, Snaefellsnes is the place where Jules Verne initiated his expedition to the center of the Earth. Most of them are easy to access, smaller or larger craters that you can walk on their rim.
Soxholl is such a crater with ladder steps built on its side and views over several other craters around its rim inviting to explore.
And how we could miss Snæfellsjökull, the 1446 meters tall glacier situated on top of a 700,000-year-old stratovolcano, the entry point in “Journey to the Center of the Earth”, Jules Verne’s classic. But the narrow and winding road turned impassable after about several miles and forced us to abandon our own journey, not to the center of the earth, but to a place that for sure seems to be from another realm.
Vikings or Farmers
In spite of all the Viking stories placed in Iceland most of its original inhabitants were peasants. The brutal weather made them fight more for their survival than to fight others around. They settled in farms where the houses were built with turf roofs with just a tiny window exposed to the elements. These houses were connected and each had a function from, sleeping to storing and cooking. There was one room where all inhabitants were sleeping, two in a bed, their body heat the only source that could warm the room in the long frigid nights.
Glaumbaer Farm in Northern Iceland is the best preserved example of these type of housing. Close by there are ruins of a Viking settlement. It seems that a farm was built here since the settlement of Iceland in the year 874. The present farmhouse has a total of 13 buildings the latest part being built in 1879. People lived in Glaumbær farm until 1947 when the farm was declared a protected site.
Around 1010 in Glaumbær lived Snorri Þorfinnsson and his parents. Snorri is considered the first European child to be born in America while his parents were exploring the east coast.
Known as the street art capital of Iceland, Hellissandur sits on the tip of Snæfellsnes Peninsula. In the summer of 2018, a team of international artists decided to transform an abandoned fish factory and adjacent buildings around town painting 30 large murals inspired by a local stories.
Hell to Heaven
Dimmuborgir, or the Black Fortress, is probably the best representation of hell. Nothing boils there anymore, but the imagination can shape the way this land was formed at one moment in its tormented history. The eruption that created Dimmuborgir happened 2,300 years ago.
The hike among the lava formation is the most dramatic I ever encounter in any volcanic areas, a path that navigates among pillars of lava with lots of caves and holes in the ground from where you could see the blue sky.
The flowing lava passed over a lake, causing its water to boil. The contact with the lake’s water cooled off the lava flow that soon solidified, creating large stacks of rock and caverns, caused by bubbles of intense steam. The Dimmuborgir area spreads over a large, collapsed lava tube shaped by a lava lake flowing in from the large eruption. As the lava continued to crawl into the Mývatn area, its top part collapsed leaving behind only the hollow pillars of solidified lava.
Dimmuborgir found its place in the Icelandic culture where lava caves are supposedly the homes of vile trolls. The most famous troll couple are the half-troll, half-ogre children eating Grýla and her husband Leppalúði. They had thirteen sons who supposedly live in Dimmuborgir and are now presented as the ‘Icelandic Santa Clauses’ or Yule Lads. On the thirteen nights before Christmas, these trolls come one by one to terrorize Icelanders, each with their own strategy after which they were named.
They would harass livestock, steal and lick the house’s supplies of yoghurt or staring into houses, looking for things to steel. Like most horror Icelandic stories, the Yule Lads were probably created to keep children inside the house and not go out in the freezing Icelandic winter nights, Recently these trolls got ‘Americanised’ and they wear Santa costumes and bring gifts as a tribute to the consumerist new society.
With a drop of 12 meters over a 30 meters stretch Godafoss does not make for an impressive waterfall. Its location though makes it both part of Route 1 and the Diamond Circle and it is main visiting place in the northern part of the country. It can easily be explored from both sides on paved walks that make it easily accessible.
In modern Icelandic, its name can be interpreted either as “waterfall of the goð (pagan idols)” or “waterfall of the goði , that means chieftain. However a myth that circulates since the end of the 19th century associates the waterfall with the place where Chieftain Þorgeir Ljósvetningagoði threw in its waters the old pagan Norse gods declaring Christianity the official religion of Iceland around the year 1000. There is no document to prove his act but the church of Iceland monopolized on the story and immortalized the event in the stain glass of at least one church in Akureyri.
If Dimmuborgir is the hell, the Myvatin Natural bath are the heaven. Blue hot water, almost at body temperature in a moon-like landscape. Even if it is cold outside, and it was, you can spend hours dipped into the blue waters of the lagoon, just enjoying its heat or sipping a drink. With the vicious wind blowing wildly you are never sure that you can muster the courage, to undress, take a bare-skin shower and walk/run outside in the chill wind toward the blue pool. But once inside you don’t want to get out. The Myvatin Natural Bath are similar with the the better advertised ones, the Blue Lagoon and the Sky Lagoon. Probably, less hype make for a better experience.
Fire
South of the Diamond Circle, around Lake Myvatin, is the Krafla region, one of the most active volcanic areas in Iceland. Leirhnjukur is one of the volcanic spots where fire burns under ice, on this wild island shaped by water and wind. The last eruption of this volcano was in 1984 no matter that most of the locals remember the Fires of Krafla in 1975 as the most significant volcanic eruption in Iceland’s modern history. The expulsion of lava starting in 1980 can still be seen today.
Leirhnjukur is an active volcano that shaped its 50-meter-tall red clay hill and the surrounding cracked cones. Around it there are small crater lakes with boiling geothermal waters that produce steam vents and smoking fumaroles. When stepping into this area it feels like you are on a planet of fire from another realm spewing steam like from the guts of hell unveiling everything in a mystical atmosphere.
Around the entire area, hot springs burst out, some collected in an unusually hot shower in the middle of the frigid landscape.
Krafla Crater located less than one km away from Leirhnjukur-Clay Hill is a stunning aquamarine splash of color contrasting dramatically with the greys and reddish-browns of the lava fields that surround it. A hike around it unveils also another pool of aquamarine collected from a geothermal point close to the crater.
Everything in the area seems to boil with steam towering from lots of fumaroles covering the sky in a white blanket. The feeling is that under the earth is a boiling ground of a hell imagined in Norse mythology’s religious books.
Close by there are boiling the mud pools of Hverir. A collection of fumaroles, sulfurous mud springs, and steam vents all in a red-orange landscape placed at the foot of the Namafjall volcanic “mountain of mines”. The entire area is known as the Namaskard geothermal area.
With so much underground thermal activity a geothermal power plant was built close to the volcanic area that produces 3MW of geothermal energy.
The boiling mud pools are a show arresting the attention and mesmerizing the viewer. Fumarole gas rises through surface water in these mud pools. They produce sulphuric acid which increases the acidity of the water. The rock and soil above are dissolved in this acidic water, producing mud.
The temperature underground is above 200°C. The cold groundwater seeps down to the boiling magma where it gets superheated and returns to the surface pushed by the gas. Around the vents are formed sulfur deposits with mixtures of silica and gypsum. Like in the geysers we visited before, the pools’ temperature at the surface reaches 80-100°C.
The best hike in the area is on climbing Hverfjall, the largest volcanic cone on the planet. The 3.3-mile hike climbs the side of the volcano till it reaches the rim. The trail that follows the top of the rim is a 2 mile/3.2 km walk overlooking Lake Myvatin which was formed also during the eruption of this volcano 2500 years ago.
It’s a land of tuff and ashes that are blown as clouds by powerful winds. It’s an extremely unpredictable environment weather-wise that we experienced firsthand. While we climbed and hiked most of the rim the weather was relatively good with just gentle pales of wind. Well, as gentle as they can be in Iceland… But when we were no more than 100 meters from starting our descent to the parking place the wind picked its gale force trying to blow us and all other intruders, away from the rim. Its force was so strong that we could not walk anymore and we only tried as much as possible to stand and not to be blown away. Our son was shooting with the iPhone that was shaking in his hands I was sure that it will be blown off towards the base of the volcano. I tried to shoot with my camera but right away I was knocked off my feet and found myself on the ground. My wife was trying to get to a rock that she embraced dearly while laying on the ground. All of us lined down on the ground looking terrified at the small rocks and sand blown off the volcano’s rim under our feet.
The ash and turf blown by the wind hurt our hands that anchored us to the rocks. We stayed on the ground for 20-30 minutes, trying twice with no luck to stand. Eventually, without decreasing its force, the wind changed a bit in its direction and guided by this change of tonality in this malefic concert, we all got up. We were afraid to run and be blown away by the gale but we rushed to the descending trail where we knew that the rim of the volcano will protect us from the force of the wind. When we looked at our faces we were covered in ash, around the eyes, inside nostrils and ears, and inside and around our mouths making us all look like miners getting out after a long shift.
Moonscape
The Diamond Circle is an off-Route 1, 250 km loop reaching deeper into the northern part of the country. The road was always there as a dirt road difficult to navigate in winter but recently got paved but still opened up only in the summer months. The Circle has actually two access roads but only the 862 is currently paved. Soon after Egilsstradir, Route 1 reaches Route 862. The road turns right and enters a moonscape of flat lands covered in lava rocks with no mountains in sight.
The road passes several impressive sites, the first on the list, Dettifoss, the most powerful waterfall in Europe with a debit of 200 cubic meters of water per second. The waterfall’s drop is 45 m with a width of 100m. What impressed me when coming closer to Dettifoss was less the waterfall than the snow patterns that looked like a monochrome work of art. The path by the waterfall was packed with groups of tourists, the first crowds we encountered after we departed the regions close to Reykjavik.
Another path took all these crowds from Dettifoss to Selfoss but the access to the waterfall drop is closed afraid probably of slippery conditions combined with the fierce winds. The walls of the Jökulsárgljúfur canyon which has at its end Selfoss are formed by hexagonal basaltic columns.
A nice 34 km hiking trail goes along the canyon from Dettifoss to Asbyrgi Canyon. But we had to pick up our car so we drove to Asbyrgi and hiked a 12 km loop inside the canyon. Ásbyrgi is a part of Jökulsárgljúfur Canyon which lies within the Vatnajökull National Parka. The hike in this well-forested horse-shoe-shaped canyon skirts the basaltic walls made out of hexagonal columns looking like the work of a gigantic Lego builder.
In Norse mythology, the canyon is known as the hoofprint of Sleipnir, the eight-legged horse of Odin, the Norse god. The legend says that the canyon was formed when Sleipnir stepped on Earth from Midgard.
The end of the hike on Skógarstígur Trail is climatic, the path reaching an emerald pool named Botnstjörn pond, under the basaltic walls that close the valley. The quietude of the place is inspiring and you’ll find everybody sitting in complete silence stunned in a way by the beauty of the sight. The perfect mirror of the green waters reflects the canyon’s rocks and the blue sky with just a tiny ripple created by a soundless moving duck.
Puffins arrive in Iceland in late April and could be seen in the country till the end of August. Flocks of blackbacks fly fishing near the rocks where they make their nests. We found them close to the northern peak of the island by the Öxarfjörður, an entire colony populating the rocks. Called Lundi by the locals, puffins return to the same breeding grounds each year. Like penguins, puffins are monogamous with lifelong partners. Both parents take care of the egg, which takes around 36-45 days to hatch after which they spend the next 45 days taking care of the chick’s feeding.
Husavik is the largest harbor and a charming one on the Diamond Circle. It’s the hub for whale watching in Iceland with lots of specially built boats anchored in the harbor ready for the next day’s trip.
Icelanders
While driving in Iceland one thing that you will not encounter easily are the people. Otherwise, the country is full of horses and sheep that for sure are way more numerous than their keepers. Farms are isolated and far between, thrown under the mountains far from the main road. But even if you detour to pass by them or by any other farms closer to Route 1 you could not see a soul. If you finally see a person walking by the road in no time he may snatch the phone to take a picture and you realize that he is just another tourist like you lost among sheep and horses.
Finally when you arrive in the evening in a town and go to a restaurant you may encounter 3-4 “locals” who tend the place but after a while you realize that all of them, everywhere you go, are young Poles who speak impeccable English with no Icelandic word in their mouth.
Iceland is completely digital. All payments are on credit cards. From hotel reservations to a parking place in the middle of nowhere, or even the toilet in the woods all have a machine that takes the card or a QR code for an app. No cash payment option. We were wondering how we could get some souvenir coins in Iceland. But of course, you can pay by cash if you have and want but mainly in bars, restaurants, and shops.
This complete digitization of Iceland imposed that in spite of the sparsely populated areas, the have phone signal available everywhere. Even behind the mountains rising out of nowhere that in any other “developed” country would block the signal, somehow the Icelanders managed to make the cell phone signal pass through. Maybe it’s the wind 🙂
The Icelanders’ lack of presence is also noticeable in hotels and guesthouses. Right after you make a non-refundable reservation on Booking.com you receive a long email about the place you rented that includes all the details with your room number and an entry code. From outside the guesthouses or the hostels/hotels look pretty unassuming, just a long building that can host inside anything. But inside you discover an impeccable room in elegant Scandinavian design with comfortable beds and squeaky clean bathrooms. There is nobody around tending the place so in the morning you leave and do not meet a soul.
From Djupivogur we continued our eastern fjords foray on Route 1 by waterfalls and exquisite rock formations like the Green Rock a unique place in the country, UNESCO-protected, by isolated lighthouses surrounded by a flock of birds and charming harbor towns, making our way to Sydisfjordur.
The road to the picturesque Sydisfjordur town that Walter Mitty skateboarded in the movie was a dark band in a sea of snow glittering in the sun. It was a spectacular ride between white peaks on a surprisingly balmy day and, for a change, with no wind.
The road ended in front of the same Aldan Hotel, as taken from the movie, close to the main street and the church.
The picturesque location of the town squeezed between two tall mountains makes it prone to landslides like the one that happened in December 2020 that devastated parts of the town.
But it is also inviting to explore and see the town from above on the multiple trails that crisscross the mountain. We picked a route from the dense map that passed by Tvisongur Sound Sculptures where you could exercise your singing skills from the top of the mountains. There are five domes, each with its one tonality corresponding to a tone in the Icelandic musical tradition of five-tone harmony.
The “extended-extended” hike we took transversed the mountain above crossing numerous brooks covered by blankets of snow under which we could hear the water gushing by our feet. At each such passage, it was a waterfall worth photographing.
The almost 3 miles hike took more than 2 hours on a very rocky and steep mountain overlooking the charming town below where a cruise ship in the harbor was readying to leave the port.
Eggs
Djupivogur is a tiny harbor at the end of a fjord. Looks charming with its cute harbor backgrounded by the white capped peaks. But what made Djupivogur memorable for us was the walk on its beach at sunset, a beach that is a birds’ paradise.
Djupivaogur to black sand beach make for a 6 miles hike surrounded by the calls of the birds making all attentive of the intruders that may have come to raid their territory. The main caller was the oyster catcher that never stopped sending the alarm. They had special places where you could see the oyster gathered, places where they may feed their offsprings. When we got closer to those places the calls will never end and the birds would fly around continuously letting everybody know about our presence.
The walk is around the sea winding back to the numerous tall mounds of black sand covered on top by the beach vegetation. Lava plunged into the ocean in perfect straight walls, looking like a god descended from heaven, mollified the land and stopped its advancement. Straight sheets of rocks built by the godly architect on which you could step like on a stairway to heaven.
And the birds among the lava as well, on the rockeries by the sea, their shrieks never leaving us. You could watch how the small oyster catchers whose flight looked always like a struggle became a bullet going to the intruding raven who flew way too close to their nests.
Maybe this amazing birds’s paradise inspired the artwork installed in the harbor by Icelandic visual artists Sigurður Guðmundsson, called “Eggin í Gleðivík”, “the Eggs at Merry bay”. The work is made out of 34 huge granite eggs which represent the eggs of each of the nesting birds in this area, many of which are migrating birds laying their eggs in Iceland.
Fjords
With its filigree of fyords the eastern coast of Iceland make for a spectacular drive. Route 1 follows these intricate details of landscape where mountains seem to spring up from the ground descending all the way into the ocean, as the whim of a giant. The road seems almost apologetical in this landscape that seemed not made for humans who marked their spared presence in the few charming towns on the way. The main town is Hofn, a pretty sizable community where you can pack some supplies for the road ahead. The narwal statue in the its park is an offer to the glaciers that could be seen across the fjord, four of them, all limbs of Vatnajokull.
We followed through the fjords on Route 1, the road built around the island that is our main conduit for this trip in Iceland. Route 1, named in Icelandic Þjóðvegur 1, has about 1322 km and is a continuous paved road that surrounds entirely the island. We started on it in Reykjavik going on the souther side of the island and continuing now through the spectacular eastern side of Iceland. If by a stretch of imagination you have only one day in Iceland, you can drive this road in a day and it will be an amazing experience. It’s spectacular! Even you don’t stop anywhere, that would be a terrible thing to do, the beauty of this road is unmatched. In many places of the world, USA as well, there are some portions of roads labeled as Scenic Byways, spectacular drives in amazing landscapes. By the same norms, Route 1 of Iceland would qualify as a Scenic Road on its entirety.
But of course we stopped on the way. And way too much because any stop seems to be spellbinding. The stops made the short distances planned to drive for the day stretched in time and only the long daylight helped us covered it.
Hvalnes with its small pebbled black beach is listed as a natural reserve. The lagoon that separates the beach from the ocean and the mountain is a breeding ground for birds. At the end of the beach is a red lighthouse contrasting with the black and blue of the surroundings, a target a short and peaceful hike.
In the background are the Eystrahorn mountains, a replica of the Westrahorn we saw a day before, seemed to be made by the same miraculous force who planted peaks plunging into the sea.
A bit further down the road another stop at another black sand beach. Fauskasandur is the most interesting beach but one of the many connected by a path by the sea where the only souls joining you in the hike are the fulmars breeding in the rockeries.
On occasion the mountain plunged directly in the ocean. The road is protected by some large walls that will arrest the constant fall of volcanic rocks that form the perfect slopes that rise to the skies.
One last waterfall makes for a perfect picnic place before we reached Djupivogur where we’ll spend the night.
Snow
While hiking in Iceland you always need to check the weather. Like any mountain climate it may change on a whim; it can be mellow, pleasant and in no time can snow with brutal winds. Vestrahorn, the ridge on the Eastern Coast of Iceland that comes almost to the ocean’s beach is a great place to hike. In its middle is a causeway at whose end was built an American military base that was used during the Cold War. Iceland is not part of the EU but its position made it critical for NATO that they joined in 1949. NATO is also Iceland’s defense system because the country does not have a standing army. Meanwhile the military base was decommissioned and returned to Iceland, used nowadays for civilian purposes.
There is a 5 miles loop that follows the Stokksnes beach and loops back to the parking places covering the entire Vestrahorn area. Unfortunately, too much spring water made the hike quite difficult and just after a couple of hours the wind picked up, the temperature plummeted and it started to snow. One of those unexpected snow storm.
In Iceland they have a word: “Gluggavedur”. It means “window-weather”, a weather that looks so nice when you admire it from behind your window but when you get outside you’d quickly change your mind and return inside. The snow storm looked great from inside the car but outside the cold and the wind were brutal. So we packed and left to the hotel thinking that we’ll spend the rest of the day in bed.
It snowed for a bit and surprisingly after a while the sun came out, with zero clouds in a warm and pleasant weather!!! Around 6PM we drove to Flaajokull, the sloping glacier, and did a spectacular and totally unplanned hike among beautiful rock formations and eyes of water towards the front of the glacier. The glacier retreated about 2 km in recent years, an alarm sign for the global warming in Iceland.
Ice
The attraction of Svartifoss does not stand in the waterfall itself but in the picturesque setting formed by the hexagonal columns that surrounds it. Those basaltic columns that gave the waterfall its name, “Black Falls”, represented a source of inspiration for various artists from the architect Guðjón Samúelsson in the construction of the Reykiavik church to Richard Serra in “Milestones”.
The pleasant hike to Svatifoss continues to the top of a hill surrounded by snow capped peaks. The return follows a path that comes to an old farm museum with turf houses built into the hill before a time when green architecture was even a word. The houses’ doors are open, like most of the doors in Iceland, and you can enter and explore the old interiors furnished with old artifacts.
Iceland is covered 10% glaciers. It has 269 glaciers besides some that already melt and lost the termination “jokull” – glacier. When the first settlers came from Norway they coined the name of “Snowland” that later was switched to Iceland, probably a more appropriate name. The rumors at the time were that the newly arrived wanted to scare newcomers to come and settle and share with them the green pastures of the island.
The hike to Svartifoss and beyond is actually in Skaftafell, a park close to the glacier that carries its name. The hike towards the glacier passes pools of water on areas where the glacier retreated and reaches a tumultuous river that blocks the access to the iced area.From Skaftafellsjokul a leftward path goes in about an hour to its neighbor Swinafellsjokull. The path is not documented and not knowing where exactly goes we drove to the another trail head that took us to the base of the glacier. There we found large blocks of ice covered in ash and dirt that blocked the access to the snowed area, dangerous blocks full of some visible and many invisible crevasses
But the main glacier of the island is Vatnajokull and all others are just his limbs. It is ten times larger than any of the other glaciers of the island and all southern glaciers are now organized as parts of the Vatnajokull National Park. Vatnajokull shimmers in the late day sun rays inviting for a climb in spite of the gale force that raised clouds of snow at its top.
We felt again the powerful wind when we walked toward Jokullsarion, a lagoon full of icebergs broken from the glacier. The wind was so powerful that if we jump we felt like flying but it tapered off when we approached the lagoon.
The connection between the lagoon and the ocean is crossed by a bridge on Route 1. The icebergs float from Jokullsarion on the river that flow into the ocean, bringing large iceberg that stop for a while on the way till they are pushed by others. You could watch how a huge block that seem to stay there forever is knocked off by a tiny block that hits it from the back and continues its floating to the ocean wobbling and twisting in the fast river.
The icebergs travel under the bridge and many land on the ocean’s beach, a black sand beach full now of crystal cleared block of ice glittering in the sun that gave it the name of Diamond Beach.
Wind
The weather forecast showed wind and rain but the morning was clam at Solheimajokull a glacier on the way. A gravel road reaches very close to the glacier and after a short walk in front of it you are able to climb on top of it.
Like in all other glaciers the top of this glacier was also covered in a black soot, the ash of the volcanic lava that surrounds it. The ash created interesting patterns but these black patches will absorb the sunlight speeding up the its melting. At the glacier’s base there are several visible pools of quick sands. For sure there are not like the quick sands from “Indiana Jones” but If you stand on them for a while your shoes would get sunk and you’ll need to put a fight to pull them out.
The rain started on the way to Vik. When reaching Dyrholaey Lightouse we could see from the car the rain drops going almost horizontally. We tried to get out for walk but the wind was so strong that only getting out of the car was a real fight. It was the first time we encountered the Icelandic powerful gale we only heard about. The wind was morphing those tiny rain drops into arrows that were stinging your face and drenching you.
We walked by the Dyrholaey Lighthouse towards the sea and the wind only increased its force making everybody to speed up the visit and going back to the cars.
The gale force seems only to increase when we reached Reynisfjara, the black sand beach. In a nice day a stroll on the beach to its end can be as long as 6 km. But in the petulant rain moved by gale an adventurous stroll was just to enter the beach. The hooting yellow light was flashing advising everybody to stay far from the tumultuous ocean that end many lives here. People were coming on the beach to experience the gale force and looked for shelter in the Halsanefshellir Cave.
We could barely stand in the powerful wind that could knock you off your feet.The black sand blown by the gale stuck to the pants, adding a black layer to their back. The sand entered in our ears, eyes, nostrils and you could feel sand in your mouth crunched between teeth. Somebody took off her jacket to take an “Instagram picture” and the jacket was snatched by the gale and fed it to the ocean that teasingly send it back on top of a wave once towards the shore but nobody from the group dared to go and recover it. But to be in that gale force was addictive and we returned several times on the beach coming back to the car skin-wet with all clothes totally drenched.
Dried a bit in the car’s heat we made one last effort when we reached Fjaorargljufur Canyon. The rain seemed to stop and we hiked up the deep canyon just to find ourselves in the same gale wind force and petulant rain towards the canyon’s top. But the views of this 100 meters deep canyon were spectacular even in the rain. Carved for about 2km by river Fjaðrá in the bedrock dating from the Ice Age, the canyon is thought to be about two million years old.
The Shape of Water
The power of water relies in its persistence. Just a trickle, but a constant one can bore through mountains. Any obstacle is overcome and the trickle becomes a brook, and later a river tumbling tumultuously over rock ledges into the abyss. The waterfalls of Iceland display such a force that they look as the force of the Norse gods.
And there are a lot of them all over the island. In the southern side of the island, the two famous ones are Seljalandsfoss and Glufrabuifoss. “Foss” means waterfall so adding the word after their name makes for a pleonasm. But nobody knows how to read these long Icelandic words so the mistake may be forgiven. In front of Seljalandsfoss people look like ants. The drizzle did not bother them because if you come close to the waterfall its spray will more than wet anybody. And for the adventurers who want to walk behind the waterfall a gale of wind will pour a gallon of water onto them drenching them entirely.
Glufrabuifoss is special. You could peek towards it through the canyon walls but you have to walk on stepping stones in the river to reach its base hidden in a rock cauldron. Even if you are near it the water from the falls does not reach you but the spray will cover you in no time. But you are in that cauldron that looks like an initiation place for the vikings or their ancestors and you feel in contact with something more powerful that you could ever imagined.
Not far from these two large waterfalls there is another pair. Kvernufoss is close to the road, a charming walk by the river in a narrow valley guarded by tall rocks. Its setting is impressive, its valley being one of the most picturesque.
But the waterfall considered the most beautiful in Iceland is Skogafoss, a monster waterfall whose spray rises like after an explosion. It has its own story about another chest of gold hidden behind its expanded mantle. The powerful Skoga river meanders through the mountains descending on a 60 meter drop on its entire width of 25 meters.
To get a top view of Skogafoss you climb its side on a laddered path that is part of a very long trail named Fimmvorduhais. The mountain trail follows the river on top of the plateau offering amazing views to the multitude waterfalls. There are probably 10 or more waterfalls, one more interesting than another, each with its own shape, the shape of water. We felt all these waterfalls like luring us to keep going and hike as far as we could because another beautiful view or, who knows maybe a chest of gold may be just after the next hill.
The entire trail is about 27 km following the river on its entire length. It is one of the most spectacular trails in the region. We hiked till we reached the top of the plateau where you could see the snow patches on its top and turned back after about 4 km of climbing.
In the valley the saga huts used by the locals were blending in the landscape. They were always built under huge rocks extending large caves. The rocks were inhabited by birds whose chattering and singing was probably the cave inhabitants’s only music during the long Icelandic nights.
Golden
Usually the term “golden” is a marketing term but the Golden Circle’s name in Iceland may have some roots in the Icelandic sagas. It’s the easiest way to get a taste of Iceland in a day tour near Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik. However Iceland’s founding place and capital used to be in Thingvellir, a place where in 930AD the settlers established one of the oldest parliaments in the world called Althing that means in the Norse language “assembly field”.
Thingvellir, Iceland
Thingvellir National Park is located in a basaltic canyon high on top of an expanse of lakes formed by a flooding river. Iceland is divided by the Mid–Atlantic Rift and it is the only place where this rift is above sea-level. In Thingvellir you can walk on the crack and see clearly the edges of both plates..
The word geyser comes from the town of Geysir in Iceland. Here a field of geysers is spread across a large hill that can be seen from a distance. The main geyser is exactly the one named Geysir, large but quite dormant and infrequent. Nearby is the more active and pretty regular Strokkur where people gather around to watch it’s every 5 minutes show.
The promised gold comes in the story at Gulfoss, a spectacular waterfall on Hvita river that tumbles in two steps. The river tumbles into a crevice, 32 meters deep and 2.5 km long that is perpendicular on the flow of the river.
The story goes that a farmer who had a chest of gold, afraid the thieves would steal it hid it under the waterfall. The gold fall in the waterfall giving the golden hue in the sunny days. But most probably you may see less of the gold and more of a rainbow in the sunshine. Nowadays in a totally digitized Iceland where there are practically no cash payments, a chest of gold could still be found only in the realm of the Icelandic sagas.
Further down from Gulfoss, Hvitna river continues its flow through a deep canyon made of breccia rocks looking like an otherworldly collection of pillars and cliffs. These rocks were formed in the volcanic or the tectonic events that happened in this land for millenniums that only the powerful and voluminous Hvitna was able to penetrate.
History, geology, geysers, waterfalls and canyon. All on the Golden Circle in a one day trip. Pretty good if you are in a rush in Iceland. But how about a volcanic crater? Here comes Kerið Crater, an approximately three thousand years old volcano. It’s young compared with the other volcanos in the country, roughly half the age of most volcanic calderas found in Iceland. Its young age gives Kerið’s slopes the red color from the fresher iron deposits.
Hallgrímskirkja
The Church of Hallgrímur built in the middle of Iceland’s capital seems like pulled out from a Tolkien movie. Its name commemorates Hallgrímur Pétursson, an Icelandic poet and a minister of the church. The construction took more than 40 years being consecrated in 1986. Its stunning shape with the gradual rising columns on sides was inspired by the basaltic columns surrounding Svartifoss, a famous waterfall in Eastern Iceland. In front of the church is the Leif Ericson’ statue, the first explorer who reached America’s coast.
One third of Iceland population of close to 372000 belongs to the Church of Iceland. From the top of Hallgrímskirkja’s tower at 74.5 meters you can get a panoramic view over Reikjavik. The town’s name in Old Norse means “the smokey bay”, probably related to the numerous geothermal pools that surrounds it. On the bay’s shore is Harpa Concert Hall with a distinctive colored glass facade inspired by the basalt landscape of Iceland.
Roaming the world 
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