Iceland 2025

June 11th, 2025 - Storm

After a qui­et night and a good break­fast in the camper, we hiked up to Svar­ti­foss (black water­fall, named after the col­or of the sur­round­ing rock). The trail starts right at the camp­ground. The basalt columns at the water­fall are said to be the inspi­ra­tion for the famous Hal­grimm­skirk­ja in Reyk­javik.

Triv­ia: Basalt columns at Svar­ti­foss
The impres­sive hexag­o­nal basalt columns at Svar­ti­foss are the result of the cool­ing of lava: when mag­ma solid­i­fies, it con­tracts and breaks into reg­u­lar shapes - most com­mon­ly the typ­i­cal hexag­o­nal columns.

This pat­tern is so effi­cient that it can also be found in nature, for exam­ple in hon­ey­combs, dried mud pud­dles, or bee hives. This pat­tern is so effi­cient that it can also be found in nature, for exam­ple in dried mud pud­dles and bee combs.

At Svar­ti­foss, how­ev­er, the black columns grad­u­al­ly break off and fall into the depths. For this rea­son, vis­i­tors are not allowed to leave the paths and plat­forms – for their own safe­ty, to pro­tect the veg­e­ta­tion, and so that oth­er trav­el­ers can expe­ri­ence the water­fall in all its beauty.

After the morn­ing camper sup­ply and dis­pos­al rit­u­als, we set off for the ice lagoon. On the way there, we want­ed to check out a gorge called Mulaglju­fur Canyon. Before that, we had a great view of the glac­i­er tongue of Skaftafell­sjökull, a 10-kilo­me­ter-long and almost 2.5-kilometer-wide glac­i­er tongue of the gigan­tic Vat­na­jökull Glac­i­er. Below the glac­i­er is a glacial lake:

We con­tin­ued on the ring road to the canyon and the ice lagoon. But… the weather!

Dur­ing the jour­ney, it sud­den­ly became increas­ing­ly windy with­in about five min­utes. We could bare­ly keep the camper on the road; it was already shak­ing alarm­ing­ly in the gusts. Despite sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduc­ing our speed, it became increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to keep the bulky vehi­cle on track. The heavy trucks, on the oth­er hand, were com­plete­ly unaf­fect­ed by the storm and over­took us sev­er­al times at full speed.

So we were forced to dri­ve to the first avail­able park­ing lot (belong­ing to Trolls Expe­di­tion, which offers glac­i­er hikes). Some­one imme­di­ate­ly came over, but was almost blown away, and asked if we were plan­ning to go hik­ing! When he real­ized that we had dri­ven here out of sheer neces­si­ty, he showed us the best way to park the camper in the wind. And there was an incred­i­ble amount of wind, shak­ing the camper through and through.

At least the storm had blown most of the clouds away. There was even a beau­ti­ful 🌈 rainbow.

Since we were stuck here, we watched the first part of the Net­flix series KATLA on the iPad. It is set in Vik, where we saw our first puffins yes­ter­day. We rec­og­nized many of the loca­tions right away. The series takes place after a vol­canic erup­tion and depicts a world in which mys­te­ri­ous events and super­nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na occur. Well worth watching—especially if you’re trav­el­ing in Iceland.

Around 10 p.m., the wind final­ly died down a bit. We already had din­ner. More campers had gath­ered in the park­ing lot to weath­er the storm. Late in the evening, they all drove away one after the oth­er. Due to the late hour, I had already resigned myself to stay­ing there overnight, but Simone found it scary to be there alone. She kept on moan­ing (she’s good at that!) until I got out of bed again and we drove back to a camp­site 12 km away.

Although the storm sub­sided dur­ing the night, there were sev­er­al heavy rain show­ers. The weath­er in Ice­land is tru­ly unpre­dictable. The locals say, “If you don’t like the weath­er, just wait an hour.” How­ev­er, it is sup­posed to improve the next morn­ing, so we will try our luck again with the canyon and ice lagoon.