Icelandic Saga
- John Burkinshaw
- 4 hours ago
- 11 min read
Last year when I was visiting my tai chi tutor and his lovely family down in Dorset we were talking about places we wanted to travel to and I mentioned Iceland. It would be a third visit but I've wanted to go in the summer and see the north side of the island. Colin's daughter, Lyndsay, said she had always wanted to visit Iceland too and we thought we could do a week in each other's company and enjoy a calm but adventurous trip sometime in 2026. We booked it last November and suddenly the time had arrived. I got the now-usual anxiety building up in the days beforehand, but once I was at the airport (after having to wait for two ferries to avoid the closed Erskine bridge, and a diversion in Greenock that made me late) I was fine. Flights were on time, with Lyndsay arriving slightly before me, followed by long queues at passport control and again to the car hire desk, but eventually we were on our way again. The drive to the hotel on the north coast was about 7 hours and we finally pulled in just before 1am having stopped to take photos of the sunset and the hills and mountains, and driven through thick fog in places, filled the car with petrol and picked up some snacks.
Foss Hotel is lovely - chic and modern but feels luxurious and we found, in daylight the next morning, we had glorious views over Lake Myvatn and a spectacular volcanic crater. Breakfast involved a bit of everything plus shots of cod liver oil, which I gave a hard pass! Once stuffed on fruit, yoghurt and pastires we set out for Hverir and The Fly Lands - a geothermally active area about 15 minutes down the road that stank of sulphur but was quite beautiful. There were bubbling mud pools, hissing steam vents, green crystals, fluorescent yellow deposits on rocks and lots of incessantly annoying flying things that followed everyone around! Absolutely spectacular and so totally alien to what we know back in the UK.
Just down the road is the lava field, Dimmuborgir, which has a really good, smooth footpath running round it in between the lava pillars and arches, said to be inhabited by trolls and other folklore figures. It is stark and beautiful and surprisingly lush and green. We walked a few kilometres, taking in the kirkjan (church) - a huge cavern created by a large lava tube. After the walk we were hot and thirsty and stopped in the cafe for an all you can eat soup and bread buffet where we had three different flavours of soup, including Icelandic meat soup, which was delicious and more like stew, and the sweet, dark Icelandic bread cooked in geothermal heat underground for 24 hours.
Then we drove around Lake Myvatn, pausing at a beautiful viewpoint, and then the multiple extinct lava craters at Skútustaðagígar. There is a short circular footpath that runs between them and up to the rim of a large one so that you are standing on the edge of the crater looking down into it, and also across to several others. Tranquil and other-worldy. After that we finished our circuit of the lake and headed back to the hotel to chill for an hour before going out for our treat of the day.
Earth Lagoon is like the famous Blue Lagoon near Reykjavik but smaller and quieter. Having just had a revamp it looked fresh and clean and luxurious and we sank into the 40 degree, geothermally heated, milky blue-white water in full sunshine to enjoy a soak for an hour. There is a bar that you just swim up to and I tried a small Earth Lagoon beer, which was quite nice and cold, and we wandered to the edge to look out over the moon-like landscape, water glinting in the sunshine and felt very relaxed. We finished off with five minutes in the darkened steam room and then headed in for a shower with their own range of amazing hair care products, which I bought in the shop to take home.
Dinner at the hotel was exceptional - as I have found all food to be in Iceland - chicken breast with risotto, mushrooms and carrot crisps with a delicious version of a mojito and bread with whipped butter, all whilst looking out at that stunning view of the lake.
Tuesday morning was a morning of waterfalls. Selfoss is a beautiful collection of falls that flow over a long rocky ledge in a horseshoe shape from a wide river. The river originates as melt water from the glacier Vatnajökull and so the water flow varies depending on the season, weather and volcanic activity.
This flows on down to Dettifoss, apparently the second most powerful waterfall in Europe after the Rhine Falls. The sound of the roaring water and the force of it creates large volumes of mist high in the air, which results in rainbows forming over the waterfall, giving it a very magical feel.
The river then carries on down to Hafragilsfoss. This waterfall has a single drop of 27m and a width of 91m. The viewpoint is from above and you get a view along the valley which has the most incredibly prehistoric look to it and is very beautiful. The water is a muddy grey colour and the power over the falls is phenomenal.
Krafla sits on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the boundary where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates are slowly pulling apart. This makes it one of Iceland's most persistently active volcanic zones. This volcanic system has produced eruptions throughout recorded Icelandic history, with the most recent being the Krafla Fires of 1975 to 1984, with nine eruption episodes over the nine years.
The Krafla Geothermal Power Station draws on the same underground heat sources that drive the volcanic activity. It generates around 60 megawatts of electricity and has operated since the late 1970s, making it one of the older geothermal plants in Iceland. It has an amazing other-worldly feel to it, with long silver pipes running across the barren land in zigzagging lines and steam vents hissing everywhere.
Viti is an explosion crater on the northern rim of the Krafla caldera (sunken volcanic area created after an eruption has emptied the magma chamber below), filled with a geothermal lake. It formed during the Mývatn Fires of 1724 to 1729. The lake water varies in colour from pale green to milky turquoise depending on weather conditions, light, and geothermal activity. The name Víti means hell in Icelandic. We parked the car and climbed to the rim to look down into the lake, which now seems very serene and peaceful.
Geothermal Endless Shower is an unusual sight as you drive past - a permanenetly running warm shower accesible for everyone for free. We had to stop and check it out but I'd left my swimming costume at the hotel!
Grjotagja Cave - an iconic film location from the Game of Thrones. Grjótagjá is a small cave and was a popular bathing place at one time. However, geological activity between 1975-1984 caused the temperature of the water to rise to such a degree that it has not been possible to bathe there since. Obviously I stuck my hand in to check and it was delightful. Above the cave you can see the large cracks caused by the tectonic plates pulling apart.
Hverfjall is a tephra cone or tuff ring volcano to the east of Mývatn. It is 1.5km across and we could see it from our hotel. It is vast when you reach it and the walk to the rim of the volcano crater was steep and strenuous. The view from the top though is beautiful and varied - lush and green towards the lake and dry and dessert-like to the east. Several of the things we've seen today have been down lumpy gravel tracks, semi-off-road, which made for interesting and at times uncomfortable driving. We also found a ford, which looked cool but luckily we were not going that way!
After another delicious dinner I checked out the hotel sauna for 20 minutes which featured a pretty decent view and nice balcony for cooling off afterwards. Tonight is our last night at Myvatn and we were getting decent aurora notifications but it was still too light to see anything. Maybe later in the week...
Wednesday morning we started at Godafoss, a huge horseshoe shaped waterfall of the water of the river Skjálfandafljót, falling from a height of 12 metres over a width of 30 metres. There were several viewpoints from both above and below and all were spectacular. The thunder of the water was impressive and the spray coming off it occasaionlly drifted over to us spectators. We stopped in the gift shop afterwards and picked up a few things to take home.
We were then heading back south to our next hotel, stopping at a few things along the way including a 'secret' swimming spot at Foss that I'd seen on instagram and was helpfully marked as such on Google maps! It was not very secret as there were several other people there when we arrived and parking spots by the roadside too. The water was beautifully warm and there were plenty of spots for everyone to have a bit to themselves. But the best spot was right on the cliff edge. I got my costume on but I had to share this little pool with some kind of Italian influencer guy - all muscles and tan and ponytail, with another man with a big lens taking phiotos of him in the pool. They must have loved me dropping in for a splash round too!
Then across the river to Akureyri to see their very modern looking, but typically Icelandic, cathedral and surprisingly beautiful botanic gardens. It was lovely to wander round a little oasis in the middle of such a cute little town, where the architecture is very childhood fable, and hearts feature everywhere - even the traffic lights, and the motto of the town is Love Akureyri. Apparently the traffic lights were introduced during the recent economic crisis to spread hope and positivity and the locals love them so much they’re resisting calls to change them back! There was even the added surprise of a set of rainbow steps to brighten things up too.
Next was a slightly gruelling half hour on compacted dirt road to reach Hvitserkur - an impressive rock formation where birds nest. You can walk out to it at low tide, but the scramble down the cliff to get to it looked fairly perilous so we decided against it. It was a tranquil spot teeming with birdlife and stunning in the contrast between the black sand and the green of the foliage against the dramatic backdrop of the mountains. Then we continued on our journey, back down the dirt road and on to Reykholt for the next two nights.
Thursday morning was a tour into the glacier of Langjokull. It was a long drive up onto the glacier in a big 8 wheeled truck and then out onto the glaringly bright snow of the mountain before descending down a tunnel to strap on crampons. We followed our guide down the tunnels and learned a little about how glaciers work - a glacier is a body of ice heavy enough to move under it's own weight. The stuff it is made of at the top is neither snow nor ice, but a slowly compacting substance called firn which will become ice when it is compacted down under enough pressure. The tunnel under the ice is slowly compacting and moving over time and changing over the years. There were stripes on black along the walls where there had been eruptions and a layer of ash had settled and then there had been snow on top, building up and creating the patterns in the ice. I tasted glacial melt water that was dripping from the ceiling, and there is even a chapel inside the g;lacier, which is licensed to hold wedding ceremonies!
Reykholt was a surprisingly interesting little place with lots to see. The hotel itself is on a site with a good amount of history. A hot water pool was in use at Reykholt already in the 10th century. In the 13th century Reykholt had become the home of the historiographer Snorri Sturluson. In Sturlunga saga the hot water pool is mentioned several times. A passage pictures Snori himself in it one evening, chatting with friends. The basin bears his name and is called Snorralaug (Snori's pool.) Unfortunately it's empty at the monent as it's undergoing restoration. The hot water is piped into the pool from the hot spring, Skrifla, at the other side of the hotel. The tunnel in the photo originally connected the pool to an ancient farmhouse above, by way of a very rare stone spiral staircase from this time, about 200 yards away.
The chimney is covering the hot spring called Skrifla, which has been supplying Reykholt with hot water for 1000 years. There was also once a steam conduit to the old farmstead to heat what archeologists think might have been a large bath house. It is still used to heat houses in Reykholt today. The statue shows Snorri himself.
The old and new churches are very differnt in style. One built in late 1800s and the other completed in 1996. The spire of the new church can be seen above the tree tops as you approach Reykholt from both sides.
We also called in at Hraunfossar for another spectacular series of waterfalls and rapids with gorgeous blue milky water and plenty of view points to make the most of the whole thing.
Deildartunguhver was another short stop to see the boiling water bubbling up from the ground in huge spurts, with billowing sulphurous steam. Very impressive.
Our last day started with a tour of a lava tube. Raufarhólshellir is one of hundreds of lava tubes in Iceland which are created by lava from a volcanic eruption which slowly cools and forms a crust over the top and then empties out leaving a hollow tube behind. It was quite eerie being underground and imagining the red hot lava flowing through there 5000 years previously. The effect was heightened when we reached the end of the commercially available tunnel and the guide turned off all the lights so that all we could hear was the water dripping from the ceiling along the tunnel. He pointed out the different colours of the rocks, the lines left behind by the cooling lava and explained that there were different types of lava and how there were interesting bacteria living on the rocks, without light deep underground.
After that we drove into Reykjavik to see Höfði Lighthouse and the Sun voyager sculpture by Jón Gunnar Árnason. The artist intended it to convey the promise of undiscovered territory, a dream of hope, progress and freedom. Then we walked down the Rainbow Street Art to Hallgrimskirkja for a quick look inside. We looked at all the beautiful Icelandic crafts of jewellery and pottery and Icelandic jumpers on the way but resisted buying anything.
The last, must see, bucket list item for the week was the Icelandic Phallological Museum. Billed as the world's only dedicated penis museum it also holds the record for WORLD'S LARGEST EXPOSITION OF PHALLUSES with 284 exhibits! It is a mixture of preserved animal members, plaster casts of famous musicians, art work including a penis shaped glitterball and other items such as canes, whips and household items shaped like the male sexual organs. It was certainly an experience, and ended in the bar where you could have an appropriately themed beer, a willy shaped waffle or buy a pair of cock socks or other souvenir from the shop. Outstanding!
Once we had petted the beautiful cat chilling out in what seemed to be her regular spot in one of the souvenir shops (because there was a sign above her with her name on) we checked into the hotel and headed out to see Garður Lighthouses and have really excellent fish and chips for dinner at Röstin Restaurant at the heritage centre by the lighthouse before turning in for our final night before an early start for home the next morning.
It's been a truly memorable trip with really excellent company - thanks to Lyndsay for coming along with me and being adventurous and up for everything, attempting various pronunciations of place names (with varying degrees of success!) and packing it all in! We might not have seen the aurora… but there’s always next time.
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