From our guesthouse in Skálafell we made two stops close to the Vatnajökull glacier, at the glacial lagoon of Jökulsárlón and the black sand Diamond Beach, before spending the afternoon hiking the river canyon at Fjaðrárgljúfur. This day already felt like we’d hit our stride travelling with Alex, before we peeked out of our window that evening and finally found the sky glowing green…
I wasn’t delighted when our Alex-alarm woke us at 6am, but we had a big day ahead of us and a beautiful sunrise outside the door of our wood cabin. Our guest house had also put on a lovely breakfast buffet, featuring more cold smoked lamb (my favourite 🤤) and even some pickled herring (Sara’s favourite 😬).
We spent the best part of this day circumnavigating the Vatnajökull glacier, which covers a rather unimaginable 7,700 km2, equating to roughly 10% of Iceland’s land mass. Zoom out on the map above and you’ll easily spot the huge patch of white! The glacier extends down many of the valleys towards the ring road, re-appearing around the next corner almost as soon as it had disappeared around the last.
Jökulsárlón
Jökulsárlón is a beautiful lagoon that sits at the foot of the Vatnajökull glacier. While the main glacier has been steadily retreating, the lagoon has been increasing in size, with chunks of the glacier occasionally breaking off and floating around the lagoon for years before eventually finding their way out to sea.
We spent quite a while watching a herd of seals swim gracefully around the lagoon. Apparently the seals give birth to pups on the shore of the lagoon, although we were a month or two early to spot any.
As seems to be the case with many places we visit, this lagoon was the filming location for a Bond movie, specifically the opening sequence of A View to a Kill. In this scene, Roger Moore dodges bullets while skiing away from some baddies, before using part of a snowmobile as an improvised snowboard to music by the Beach Boys. As cringey as the moment appears now, it’s been suggested that this scene actually helped boost snowboarding into the mainstream.
Diamond Beach
Just the other side of the ring road from the lagoon lies Eystri-Fellsfjara, more popularly known as Diamond Beach. This black sand beach has recently become instagram-famous for the perfectly clear, car-sized icebergs that wash up on the beach.
Unfortunately our timing wasn’t the best, and instead of car-sized icebergs we were instead greeted by a huddle of photographers trying to make a small collection of ice cubes look as big as possible. We had a good chuckle at the scene, before joining the fray to get our own snap.
The beach itself was still beautiful, surrounded by the ice-capped mountains.
Still, we didn’t spend long here before continuing towards our destination for the afternoon. That is, once we’d given Alex one of his most scenic outfit changes so far.
Fjaðrárgljúfur
As if Jökulsárlón wasn’t intimidating enough to pronounce, we upped the stakes considerably with a stop at Fjaðrárgljúfur (see pronunciation guide for the curious).
To call this river canyon “dramatic” feels like an understatement. The canyon itself has been painstakingly formed by the flow of glacial rivers over thousands of years, leaving behind a 100m deep gorge. We were getting battered by the wind as we hiked up along the top of the canyon walls, so I’d zipped Alex right up inside my coat and tried to protect his face with his fluffiest trapper hat. He got a lot of smiles and laughs from the folks coming the other way!
At the top of the canyon we were rewarded with views across a waterfall, over which the river cascades before heading into the canyon.
It was a truly epic walk for relatively little effort (bar the wind!) and by far our favourite stop of the day. We headed on to our accommodation for the night expecting to turn in early, but the arctic skies had other plans…
Aurora Borealis
Finally, we were in luck, and managed to catch the Northern Lights without having to wake up in the middle of the night. Our first glimpse was through the window, when Sara had a bit more luck with her long-exposure technique than the previous night and we saw a definite green tinge in the sky.
By the time we’d got outside, the sky had exploded into a proper show.
For some reason I was expecting to be underwhelmed by the Aurora. In an age of colour-enhanced photos, I was expecting a static scene of barely visible light. However, we were both blown away by not just the colours and shapes cast across the sky, but also rate at which they changed. No sooner had we pointed out an emerging swirl to each other, a new ribbon of green would unroll across the sky and there’d be an even more intense display behind us.
We took so many photos that evening that Sara’s phone ran out of battery, but even that didn’t send her inside. The midnight air had become bitterly cold by the point, but a cup of tea was just enough to keep our fingers from going numb. It was a genuinely magical experience.
Iceland’s south coast is so packed with big-hitting highlights that this post marks only our halfway point along this dramatic section. The next day we’d turn the corner at Iceland’s most southerly tip, and head along the south-west coast back towards Reykjavík once again.