Iceland 2025

June 14th, 2025

After a rest­ful night, we start­ed the day with a tasty break­fast. Today, we planned to con­tin­ue our jour­ney to Stuðlag­il Canyon and the asso­ci­at­ed Stuðlafoss water­fall.

First, how­ev­er, we took a look at the lit­tle red cot­tage cov­ered in grass, called Lin­der­bak­ki. Con­trary to my assump­tion, it was not inhab­it­ed by elves, but by a local cou­ple who had lov­ing­ly tak­en care of its maintenance.

Next to it stands a nice lit­tle church, sim­ple in Nordic style. The elves prob­a­bly live on the hill behind the camp­site, but we did­n’t go there. Next time we’ll pay them a visit.

After a short walk through the vil­lage, we con­tin­ued west­ward with our camper. There were sig­nif­i­cant­ly few­er tourists here, and the pop­u­la­tion den­si­ty decreased notice­ably. The land­scape appeared more pris­tine. After a few kilo­me­ters, we came across our next pho­to oppor­tu­ni­ty: a small moun­tain lake with a view of the next fjord behind it.

A lit­tle fur­ther on was the next stop: a beau­ti­ful lit­tle church sud­den­ly appeared in the mid­dle of the coun­try­side, the very pho­to­genic lit­tle Kirkjubæ­jarkirk­ja. Next to the qui­et road, sheep were lying every­where in the grass, cre­at­ing a beau­ti­ful scene with the wide land­scape and snow-capped moun­tains in the background.

Then we final­ly arrived at Stuðlag­il. The actu­al park­ing lot was a bit fur­ther up the moun­tain and into the val­ley. The last sec­tion of the jour­ney there was very adven­tur­ous. A nar­row grav­el road. On the left was the edge of the cliff, on the right was a steep drop down to the riv­er. With our large camper, it was bor­der­line dan­ger­ous. Thank­ful­ly, no oth­er vehi­cles came towards us. From the park­ing lot, we still had to walk a bit into the val­ley, but it was an easy path, although still exhaust­ing due to the strong wind. First, we reached the waterfall:

The canyon is very beau­ti­ful, but unfor­tu­nate­ly very touristy. At the most beau­ti­ful spots, there were steel struc­tures with view­ing plat­forms for peo­ple on the oth­er side of the canyon. The steep basalt columns at the edges of the canyon were very pho­to­genic. There were sev­er­al drones fly­ing around in the canyon (includ­ing mine), so it was impor­tant to avoid collisions.

After the hike, we enjoyed cof­fee and cook­ies in the camper in the park­ing lot. Then we con­tin­ued on to our next des­ti­na­tion: Det­ti­foss and Self­oss. By then, it was already 5:30 p.m. The route took us across exten­sive lava fields, some of which were quite recent. Hard­ly any­thing grew here; the first ten­ta­tive flow­ers were only vis­i­ble upon clos­er inspection.

We arrived at our des­ti­na­tion at around 7 p.m. The water of the Jökul­sá á Fjöl­lum riv­er first plunges 10 meters over the Self­oss water­fall and then, after about a kilo­me­ter, over the 45-meter-high Det­ti­foss water­fall. Both water­falls can be reached from the same park­ing lot via well-main­tained paths. We first head­ed left to Det­ti­foss, which was once again quite impres­sive. A wide wall of water plunged into the depths. There was a lot of spray, which, depend­ing on the wind direc­tion, could be felt even at a dis­tance, but which also pro­duced a very beau­ti­ful rain­bow in the sunlight.

To get to Self­oss, you had to turn right. You could­n’t get very close, and there were fre­quent road­blocks. It is locat­ed about 1 km above Det­ti­foss:

It was already late (8:30 p.m.) and we drove on to the camp­site at Lake Mývatn. Short­ly before reach­ing the lake, there was sud­den­ly an intense smell of “rot­ten eggs”. I just com­ment­ed briefly: it was­n’t me! 😉

But jok­ing aside, there had to be some­thing inter­est­ing there - that’s the imme­di­ate asso­ci­a­tion you make in Ice­land. And indeed, there was a lot of steam ris­ing in the dis­tance. It was the Namaf­jall Hverir geot­her­mal area. Of course, we drove there right away, took pho­tos, and even got the drone out again. We also caught the last rays of sun­light, a great atmos­phere, a great loca­tion, so if you ignore the smell:

Final­ly, we arrived at our des­ti­na­tion for the day, the camp­ground at Lake Myvatn. We even found a good spot with a pow­er out­let. It was already quite late and we were pret­ty tired. Here’s a view of the lake at sun­set from the campground: