Iceland: A Land of Ice and Fire

Iceland is known as the land of ice and fire, with some of the largest glaciers and most active volcanoes in the world. Fjord-cut coastlines, glacial rivers, cascading waterfalls, hot springs, moss covered mountains, milky blue lakes. Its astonishingly beautiful landscapes are almost more mythological than real. And alongside the allure of its natural wonders, Iceland is rated as the most peaceful country in the world. 

Our first visit is a slow journey, wanting to see less so that we might see more. A week in a campervan exploring the beauty of Snaefellsnes Peninsula and the remote Westfjords. Followed by a week walking in the rugged and remarkable central highlands. 

Snaefellsnes Peninsula and the Westfjords (by campervan)

The tedious business of completing the paperwork for our rental vehicle, a brief rundown on the ways of the van and we are on our way, bypassing Reykjavik and aiming to be on Snaefellsnes Peninsula in time for a late dinner.

First we are struck by the strange, otherworldly landscapes and then by the way Icelanders speak. Icelandic sounds like a language born out of long dark nights of storytelling. Stories of sagas and shapeshifters. Ogres, trolls and giants. Vikings navigating by the sun, the flight of birds and the migratory routes of whales to find themselves on the shores of an icy, unpopulated land. There’s an ancientness to the language and a richness. 

Every day is wondrous with surreal, beautiful, ever-changing landscapes. Flat, velvet green, low lying land. The most rugged of mountains, carved by ice and fire. Sheer scree slopes holding last winter’s snow in hollows. Basalt cliffs and columns. Prisms of stone. Broken ridgelines. Lava that froze as it flowed down the mountainside. Mighty waterfalls tumbling over cliffs and rushing towards the sea. Moss covered lava fields where arctic foxes have their lairs. Black sand beaches. Craters and lakes made by volcanoes and deep rock fissures that shelter miniature gardens of flowers and ferns. Heather and grasslands and bogs.

Near Langaholt about 20 harbour seals have hauled themselves out of the water and are lolling about on the seaweed-covered rocks. Seabirds by the thousands. Purple sandpipers, ringed plovers and redshanks. Rafts of eider ducks swimming near the shore. The red algae that was once gathered and dried and eaten with butter during winter. The majestic Snaefellsjökull glacier. Still an active volcano, it is thought to emanate mystic power and be one of seven great power sources on earth. It provided the setting for Jules Verne’s novel, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, and in its mystery and magnificence you can see why.

A climb to the summit of Saxhóll Crater. It erupted 3,000 – 4,000 years ago and now supports the most delicate mosses and wildflowers on its steep, otherwise barren slopes. 

On the far western point of Snaefellsnes Peninsula there’s an ancient well, the Fálki well, where the moss grows crystal pink and neon green. It is said to have three sources: one is freshwater, one holy water and one ale. 

A ferry across Breiðafjörður Bay to the Westfjords. Views across the fjords to islands, tabletop mountains and volcanic peaks. A charming french cafe on a fjordland farm. Red sand beaches. The tide out for kilometres. Clouds floating on the shallow water waiting for the turn of the tide to become sea again. The glacier-capped Snaefellsjökull visible across the fjord. Arctic terns on the attack, ‘some of them crazy, like some people are crazy’.

Brooding, cloud-shrouded mountains. The cliffs of Látrabjarg that are the summer nesting place for seabirds of unfathomable numbers. Razor-billed auks, guillemots, fulmars, kittiwakes and puffins. The puffins burrow in the grassy, higher parts of the cliffs. We lie flat on the grass and watch them come and go, just an arm’s length away. 

Scoured, glaciated landscapes. Deep valleys, gorges and thundering, tumbling, terraced waterfalls, including the stunning Dynjandi Waterfall that cascades down for 100 metres. Rock strewn plateaus, glacial lakes and steep mountain passes. 

The Westfjords are the oldest part of Iceland. They were created by a series of volcanic eruptions around 14 to 16 million years ago. Then during an ice age 10,000 years ago, glaciers carved deep valleys into the landscape. When the glaciers retreated, the sea filled the valley floors, forming narrow, deep, steep-sided fjords. All day in our small camper van, the coast enfolding us as we wind around it, mesmerised by the astonishing beauty. We bask in geothermal pools and hot pots miles from anywhere, looking out onto fjords, mountains and a clear blue sky.

The old grocery store turned bohemian cafe in Pingeyri. The absorbing and moving Museum of Everyday Life in Isafjörour. Small, black-painted wooden churches. Abandoned herring processing plants given over to cutting-edge design studios and splashed brightly with street art. People out gathering wild blueberries. Earlier in the season, wild rhubarb is gathered and now there are rhubarb-based desserts in every cafe we frequent. 

We watch whales close to the shore at Hólmavick, their song echoing across the fjord. Fish drying huts by the shoreline. Offshore islands with lighthouses and summer houses. The landscape sometimes enigmatic in its strangeness but always beautiful. The endless days and the long summer twilight beguiling. 

The Icelanders we meet, particularly the women, are capable, strong and grounded. With a population of only 350,000, most of whom are descended from a small clan of Vikings and Celtic settlers, Icelanders can trace their family connections from the time of the settlement to the present. It’s said that when two Icelanders meet, the first question is usually ‘who are your people’.

Laugavegur Trail

The Laugavegur Trail is a legendary four-day walk from the volcanic dreamland of Landmannalauger in the central highlands to the green forests of Þórsmörk in the south, travelling through a world of rare and dramatic beauty. 

The mighty peaks of some of Iceland’s most active and explosive glacier-covered volcanoes. Huge rhyolite mountains stained bright orange, yellow and pink by volcanic minerals. Swift-flowing glacial rivers. Deep, moss-covered gorges. Fields of lava and shining black obsidian, ‘the most romantic of deserts’ according to the writer and designer William Morris who journeyed through Iceland in the 1870s and fell in love with its remarkable landscapes. 

Reykjavik to Landmannalaugur

We walk through the quiet, early morning streets of Reykjavik to the central bus station to meet our walking companions and catch the bus to Landmannalauger. We’re part of a group of 23, including two guides, Kristjana and Eydís, all members of Utivist, an Icelandic outdoors association. There’s only one other non-Icelander on the walk but we are warmly welcomed into the group. Someone is always quick to translate for us and engage in conversation as we walk and learn and marvel at the extraordinariness of the landscape.

Steam rising from the boiling earth. Swift flowing glacial rivers cutting through rock-strewn plains. People out riding Icelandic horses across the lava fields. Ash dunes, black sand and white daisies sheltering close to the ground. Slopes covered with snow and ice. The light a dusky pink before the rain comes. 

Up into the wild highlands shaped by ice and fire, past Hekla, one of Iceland’s most active volcanoes. It usually erupts every 10 years or so but while restless, it hasn’t erupted since 2000. Now, all of Iceland is waiting for it to explode.

At our destination, Landmannalauger, we spot rock ptarmigans (a type of grouse) moving unobtrusively through the lava fields. Sheep graze high up on the summer meadows.

In the afternoon we climb to the summit of Bláhnúkur, a smoky-blue volcano surrounded by glaciers, multi-coloured mountains, waterfalls, lakes and rivers cutting through gorges. Sulphurous gases, the air thick with them. The ridge sharp. The route down steep and challenging in places. Across the rugged maze of lava on the lookout for arctic foxes and back to our accommodation for the evening, a mountain hut full of walkers excited about setting off on the trail tomorrow.

Landmannalaugar to Álftavatn

An early breakfast in the hut before the crowd builds at the communal table. Then out across the black lava fields and up into the strange, beautiful, ever-changing highlands. Steam rising from the scorched earth; the ground 100 degrees centigrade in places. The colours surreal. Burnt orange, mustard and dusky pink. The landscapes swirling; more painting than real. A ptarmigan scuttling across the high moors, alert to the swoop of a falcon. A sound like rushing water, except it’s water boiling underground, percolating through the rock and forming a bubbling cauldron; steam hissing, the earth blistering.

Snow and fallen slabs of ice. Hot springs and milky blue glacial lakes. Up steeply for 1,000 metres through steam and across the ice to an obsidian ridge. Deep black, hard, shiny and as sharp as glass. Chunks of it lying around everywhere. Following stone cairns constructed by the first settlers to mark the way in this perilous terrain. These ancient waymarkers are still used for wayfinding throughout Iceland. Poignantly, one of the cairns we pass marks the place where a 25-year old walker perished in a summer blizzard a few years ago. 

Across snow-covered slopes to Hrafntinnusker, a somewhat desolately located hut, surrounded by black rock and sand. The half-way mark of today’s walk.

White cotton-grass flowers, which in their amassing are said to foretell of a snowy winter. In Icelandic, there are at least 50 words for snow. What word you use depends on when the snow lands, in what weather conditions, how much of it falls at once, what happens to it after it has fallen, how it moves etc. Drifting snow is called fjúk, fjúkburður or dríft if the wind is but a breeze, but a heavy wind changes its name to fönn, skafbylur, skafhríð, skafmold or skafningur. 

As we walk our companions tell us about life in Iceland. The craziness of the boom and then the 2008 financial crisis. The currency crashed, unemployment soared and the stock market was wiped out. The three major banks were ten times Iceland’s GDP and too big to bail out. Ninety-seven percent of the banking sector collapsed in just three days. Slowly Iceland recovered and sanity returned, although people now worry that the tourist boom that saved Iceland is unsustainable and another, if less catastrophic, crash might be looming.

Ice bridges, a chasm, ice caves and a glacier. Great, slow-moving waves of ice, like a sea, sapphire blue with the sun on it, crystals scattering the light. Lunch looking out onto ice-covered Háskerðingur, the highest mountain in the area. 

After a multicolour morning and a black and white afternoon – black rocks, dark mountains, white ice and snow – we walk into a mossy green valley with the brooding Torfatindar mountain flanking the valley on one side and Bratthála on the other. It’s like walking into Middle-earth, its mythological past easily imaginable. Across the ice-cold, braided Grashagakvísl river and on to Álftavatn, through a magical, lake-scattered valley. 

In the hut, we strike up a conversation with an Icelandic woman, Gauja, who it transpires met an Australian friend of ours on this same walk eight years ago. Even for someone who grew up in a small country town and learned the questions to ask to establish connection, this coincidental meeting seems remarkable. 

Stories around the dinner table of avalanches and of a particular avalanche that buried a village and killed all three children of one family. The only way the parents could go on with life was to move to Reykjavik and recreate the family they lost by having three more children. 

Álftavatn to Emstrum

Eastwards into the mist, over Brattháls Ridge and down into the plunging Hvanngil Chasm. Rain, then a rainbow arcing across the mountains. The landscape extraordinarily beautiful. The greens and blacks as rich as velvet. The fabled pyramidal peaks. Across a bridge over the river then up to a panorama of moss-covered black mountains and three of Iceland’s spectacular glaciers: Tindfjallajökull, Myrdalsjökull and Eyrafjallajökull. Eyrafjallajökull, a glacier-capped volcano, most famously erupted in 2010 after being dormant for 180 years. As well as causing massive flooding and wild electrical storms, it threw up an ash plume so high that it grounded air traffic in North-west Europe for days.

A glacier must accumulate enough ice each winter to be constantly moving under its own weight. One of Iceland’s 400 glaciers, Okjökull, recently lost its status as a glacier because human-induced climate change has caused more than 90% of it to melt away. This year, on 18 August, a memorial service will be held at the glacier-that-was, now simply known as ‘Ok’, having lost its suffix, jökull, the Icelandic word for glacier. A monument will be unveiled to mark this loss and its haunting inscription will read: Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier. In the next 200 years, all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you know if we did it.

Bouquets of flowers growing close to the ground on plains of black lava sand. Deep pink eyrarrós (river beauties), arctic thyme, moss campion, pink-tinged bladder campion, violet butterworts. Because we pause so frequently to take photos of this otherworldly place, we often drift towards the back of our procession of walkers and fall into conversation with Eydís our guide (the dynamic Kristjana leads the way while Eydís ensures no-one strays). Because she doesn’t seem to mind, we ply Eydís with questions about the politics and the social fabric of contemporary Iceland and are appreciative of her intelligent, forthright responses.  

A river raging with glacial debris. A waterfall crashing violently over the high cliffs. More green moss and shimmering black ash. The smell of sulphur. Volcanoes churning away under the glaciers. Fire under ice. 

After a late afternoon rainstorm we arrive at our hut sodden but we can’t resist the allure of a view so, when the rain clears, we walk up to Markarfljótsgljúfur Canyon. A pair of nesting falcons. The wild, icy expanse of Tindfjallajökull glacier. Sheer iron-red, black and vivid green canyon walls. A river and its waterfall. Mountains intricately and fantastically carved by ice and water. 

Our hut only has one window and the light is unusually dim. Late in the long evening people sit spellbound around the table while one of our companions reads aloud. Even though we can’t understand Icelandic, there’s something magical about being here in the fading light and listening to stories being told in the same way as they have for centuries. 

Emstrum to Þórsmörk (and on to Básar)

The wind howls all night. The early morning sky is eerily bright with storm light. Out across the black sand of the volcanic desert and down a steep path towards a canyon. A bridge high above the raging Syðri-Emstruá river. The sun lighting up glaciers and mountain peaks and then the clouds sweeping in again. Angelica growing wild along the rivers and creeks. Once so highly valued that it served as currency in Iceland, Angelica is still regarded as a miracle plant. 

Ridges and hills and rocks. Ash and lava. Under the Myrdalsjökull glacier is the Katla volcano. It erupts once or twice a century, melting glacial ice and causing massive floods, lightning strikes and ash plumes. Such volatility and drama. Today though, the glacier is all quiet beauty, a rippling sea of blue/green ice in the sunlight. 

We fall into step with one of our walking companions. He’s the captain of a fishing boat based in Rif in the remote Westfjords. He talks of climate change and warming seas, the appearance of fish species not seen before in his part of the world, and of having to sail much further north for cod, the fish his livelihood depends upon.

Wild crowberries almost ripe for the picking. The creamy white mountain-aven, the national flower of Iceland. The plant grows on gravelly mountain slopes and moorland. It’s also known as ptarmigan leaf as its green leathery leaves are a favourite food of ptarmigans during the long winters.

From our high, uplands vantage point we look out over a river, its estuary and the sea. Looking back we see for the last time the wild mountain landscape dramatically encircling a crater formed from an eruption 6,000 years ago. 

Knee deep through a raging river, bitterly cold and gritty with ash and into an astonishingly different world. Green birchwoods, an understory of soft green grasses and delicate wildflowers, the air sweet with their perfume and full of bird song. The Icelanders are in a state of bliss. To be among trees is a rare pleasure and these woods are dearly held. 

In the evening we mark the end of the 60-kilometre walk with a traditional Icelandic BBQ and, later, a bonfire, a summer Saturday night tradition at Básar. Marshmallows are roasted and children and adults sing.

The Icelandic flag is blue, with a white cross overlaid with a red cross. The blue signifies the sky, the sea and the distant mountains. The white signifies the glaciers and the red, volcanic fire.  It’s a land of ice, fire, rock and dramatic landscapes. All of it wild and breathtakingly beautiful. Iceland is now part of our dreaming.

If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy the Tour du Mont Blanc, France and the Tongariro Northern Circuit, New Zealand.