Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
percolating downwards for over a kilometre to magma levels; heating then forces it back
to the surface, where it exits through the sticky red soil at 200˚C. It's essential to follow
boardwalks and guide ropes here; every year someone leaves them and sinks knee-deep
into the scalding pools. These, however, are docile compared with the accompanying
steam vents , where rocks, gravel and earth have been burst upwards like a bubble to
form waist-high, perforated mounds through which vapour screams out ferociously.
6
Krafla and Viti
Up in the hills north of Hverir, the area around the Krafla volcano has been
intermittently erupting for the last three thousand years and shows no signs of cooling
down yet. The access road runs north off the Ringroad, passing right under piping from
Leirbotn power station on the way. The station harnesses steam vents to generate power;
these are what you can hear roaring away like jet engines up on Krafla's flanks. Krafla
itself (818m) was last active in the 1720s during a period known as the Mývatn Fires ,
which began when the west side of Krafla exploded in 1724, forming a new crater
named Viti (Hell). The road ends at a car park in front of Viti, now a deep, aquamarine
crater lake on Krafla's steep brown gravel slopes; a slippery track runs around the rim
through atmospheric low cloud and plenty of real steam hissing out of bulging vents.
Leirhnjúkur
West of Krafla is Leirhnjúkur , a black, compellingly grotesque lavafield whose
eighteenth-century eruptions nearly destroyed Reykjahlíð's church. A similar event
between 1977 and 1984 reopened the fissures in what came to be called the Krafla
Fires , and this mass of still-steaming lava rubble is testament to the lasting power of
molten rock: thirty years on, and the ground here remains, in places, too hot to touch.
Pegged tracks from the parking area mark out relatively safe trails around the field,
crossing older, vegetated lava before climbing onto the darker, rougher new material,
splotches of red or purple marking iron and potash deposits, white or yellow patches
indicating live steam vents to be avoided - not least for their intensely unpleasant
smell. From the high points you can look north towards where the main area of activity
was during the 1980s at Gjástykki , a black, steaming swathe between light green hills.
As usual, apply common sense to any explorations.
Northwest of Mývatn
There are a couple of historic sites worth a brief stop northwest of Mývatn, on your
way between the lake and either Akureyri or Húsavík: Goðafoss is an impressive
waterfall right beside the Ringroad, while the turf-roofed farm at Grenjaðarstaður dates
back to the Middle Ages.
Fosshól and Goðafoss
Around halfway between Mývatn and Akureyri along the Ringroad, tiny FOSSHÓLL
comprises little more than a couple of houses and a fuel pump, and marks where the
Sprengisandur route (see p.309) emerges from Iceland's interior, and warrants a stop to see
where the ice-blue Skjálfandafljöt river (which originates way down south at Vatnajökull)
tears through horseshoe-shaped basalt canyons in a pair of powerful cataracts. The largest
of these, Goðafoss (waterfall of the gods), is where Þorgeir Ljósvetningagoði - the
lawspeaker who decided that Christianity should be Iceland's official religion at the historic
Alþing in 1000 - destroyed his pagan statues by pushing them over the falls.
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT LEIRHNJÚKUR LAVAFIELD ABOVE ; KRAFLA ABOVE ; LAKE MÝVATN P.254 >
 
 
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