Iceland: This Country is Magical in a Light Snow

 From Friday, September 24

Today I went all around Myvatn, which is actually the name of the lake.  There is a bunch to see around here thanks to geothermal and volcanic activity.  

I started out the morning (in the snow) at Skutustadagigar, which is a weird grouping of psuedocraters.  They were formed when lava flows over a wetlands area.  What results is a bunch of craters popping up that aren’t actually connected to any thermal vents or magma chambers or anything like that.  They’re a bit otherworldly, but so is a lot in this area.

Pseudocraters

My second visit of the morning was to Dimmuborgir.  This was a neat area with a bunch of large lava formations.  It had a sort of magical feel to it.  Probably because it was snowing, but also in Icelandic folklore it is the home of the Yule Lads.  The Yule Lads are a bit mischievous and over 13 days in December in the lead-up to Christmas each one (there are 13) causes a specific sort of mischief, usually of the good sort (leaving a small gift for children, or a potato if they’ve been bad).  They then depart one each day after Christmas.  Wandering the trail through all the formations was fun.  There is one place that is called the Kirkjan (church), which is a large rock formation with a large cavern to it.  This trail was more just walking and less hiking, which was a nice change.

Area known as Kirkjan at Dimmuborgir

About the time the snow stopped falling, I was heading to the parking lot to hike up Hverfjall.  I thought Hverfjall was a volcano driving up to it because that is what it looked like.  Turns out it’s not quite what it is.  It is, but isn’t.  Its resulting shape comes from magma and water coming into contact.  Like every other thing I’ve climbed in the past week, it was a straight shot up the side of the crater, which I believe was said to be around 300 feet.  Then you could walk around the entire crater which was roughly 2 miles.  You could see a lot from up there, especially as it started to clear up and brighten up.

Trylla was mad that I forgot to take him to Dimmuborgir, but his face perked up when
I let him come up Hverfjall with me.

Up next was a quick stop at Grjotagja.  This is a neat little cave with water in it.  Once upon a time, people used it as a swimming pool.  And then in the 1970s volcanic activity locally caused some crack to open up, it seems, because the pool suddenly jumped to 60 C which is way to hot for swimming.  But it makes for a cool looking quick stop.

Grotagja

Up next was a trip to Krafla, which didn’t quite go as planned.  I took the road to Krafla and as I neared the geothermal power plant the road became a lot more slushy, and eventually shortly past the power plant, and 2km from my destination, it became impassible, unless you had an AWD vehicle (which I don’t).  But a lot of people seemed to say, “I don’t care, I’m going up there anyway.”  Cars were parked in the right lane, leaving the left lane for cars to leave.  People hiked up the road to get to Krafla and Viti (a filled in volcanic crater lake).  It was another 300 or so foot climb up the road on snow, but I made it up there.  I think my legs are resigned to the fact I’m doing a lot of uphill hiking and have just given in.  They’re not nearly so tired doing so now as they were a few days ago.  I got up to Viti, which was neat, but a little underwhelming just because I felt I needed more after all the work I put into it.  Krafla was looking down on us.  I was definitely not hiking up there in the snow today.  

Viti right behind, and Krafla in the back...and a hint of "I walked 2 km uphill in the snow for this?"

From there it was to Hverir, which was another geothermal area.  This one was probably the smelliest of the 3 I’ve visited here in Iceland.  It lacked the geyers, hot pools, and mud pots, and was mostly just gasy vents.  While the steam venting out makes for a neat look, it wasn’t nearly as good as the other two places I had been with geothermal activity.

I finished my evening at the Myvatn Nature Baths.  They’re a man-made set of hot pools for tourists and I’m an exhausted tourist, so I enjoyed it.  Expensive, yes (roughly $45).  But it was a good two hours of relaxation in warm water, outside, with a nice view.  And seeing as how really I haven’t spent a ton of money on things since arriving, it was worth it.

Myvatn Nature Baths