Iceland 2026 Part 3 – The North – It's Boarding Time Somewhere

Day 7 – Egilsstaðir to Mývatn

On Saturday we left Egilsstaðir to head toward Mývatn. We had planned several stops, and we managed them all but some of it got pretty confusing!

First, we went across a bridge and realized there was a beautiful canyon below it. We now know it was Jökulsa a Bru Canyon, but at the time we had no idea. We backtracked across the bridge to the pullout, and Pete flew his drone in it. We knew we were going to the more famous Stuðlagil Canyon later; it turns out this is the same river. Now I was driving, and I don’t much like bridges, so note that I ended up driving this bridge over a canyon three times – across, then back, then across again. It was worth it!

Our next stop was Rjukandafoss, a waterfall we hadn’t planned for but which was right off the Ring Road. It’s beautiful, with two levels. I hiked up to the falls while Pete flew again. Such an easy sight and a lovely surprise!

The next stop was Stuðlagil itself. There are two places to park, the east side and the west side. I had wanted to hike down into the canyon, so we thought were were going to the east side where you could do that. Nope, we ended up at the west side! After some debate, we decided to stay on the west side and not do the hike, because it was going to be a long one. However, the views from the top were still amazing! The water was very blue; depending on rainfall and ice melt, sometimes it isn’t. Stuðlagil is also known for its gorgeous basalt column formations, which you can see in some of these pictures. I will note that Pete took over driving before this, and I was glad. It wasn’t awful but I definitely would have had very white knuckles had I been the one behind the wheel!

Next, we went to Detifoss, said to be the first- or second-most powerful waterfall by volume in all of Europe, depending on sources. This one had me nervous too, and I was adamant about parking on the west side, which I’d read was the least scary. However, the long drive off the ring road found us very tired, so we pulled off into a parking area for a 20-minute nap in the car. This was definitely the right choice! Unfortunately at the same time, I checked Google Maps, which said we’d missed the turnoff for Selfoss, which was an hour or more back in the other direction.

After the nap, we made our way to the parking lot on the west side of Detifoss. We started the hike out to the falls, and then we noticed the sign for Selfoss – they were right next to each other! Google Maps was giving me directions to the east side of the falls. I’m so glad we didn’t miss it. In fact, we took the path to Selfoss first. Both falls are beautiful, but Detifoss was certainly the most impressive.

We saw people doing really stupid things here, like climbing over chains for photos, and hiking a path that was marked closed for safety reasons.

The view is better from the east side, but that’s ok – it was pretty great from the west side!

However, here is a photo where you can see more stupid tourists on the east side. I hope they weren’t as close as it looks like they are!

Then we were back in the car for the last leg of the day before Myvatn. However, we weren’t done sight-seeing! As we approached Myvatn, we stopped at the Hverir geothermal vents. They were something else, a hell on earth kind of landscape. And they stank of sulfur! But we’d seen no other sights that were anything like this yet. The colors and shapes (and smells!) were unlike any other place we had visited so far.

After we checked into our lodge, we had dinner at the Vogafjos farm resort’s restaurant. It’s a working dairy farm, and their homemade cheese is incredible! I had the slow cooked lamb shank, and Pete had a cheeseburger. When we went to pet the cows later, I was really glad I hadn’t eaten one!

Finally, we took a drive around Lake Mývatn to get our bearings for birding the next day. I picked up a lifer that evening: a flock of Barrows’s Goldeneye ducks.

Day 8 – Second Night in Mývatn

Sunday was my birding day! Mývatn is a nice hotspot and I got almost all of my target species, including one more lifer, a Common Scoter. The drive around the lake is 22 miles long, and there are a lot of places to stop and bird. One of them is the bird museum. We never went to the museum itself, which appears to be a lot of taxidermy, but the spots around it had a ton of ducks. Some spots gave us really good photo opportunities as well.

In addition to birds, we also found some beautiful Icelandic horses at one of the stops.

After birding, we visited a few local spots. The first was Grjótagjá Cave, where I touched the water and Pete yelled at me for doing so because it said “no bathing” This was another filming location for Game of Thrones. There are a couple of small openings and you can go into one to view the water inside.

Next, we went to Hverfjall, a volcano that erupted 2500 years ago and left behind a crater. It was a 1-2 hour hike. We didn’t do it but Pete flew over the rim and got some video. Then we went hiking in the Höfði forest, where I managed to actually get a poor but identifiable photo of a Redpoll, a bird I had heard but not seen yet. The bugs were crazy so our netting came in really handy! One of us (ahem, me) ended up doing most of this hike twice because I dropped my lens cap and I was a bit stubborn about finding it. But I did!

Next, we stopped at the Skútustaðir Pseudocraters. These grassy “craters” are formed when boiling lava flowed over the marshlands. They aren’t particularly high or deep, but there are a number of them and they look really interesting. Unfortunately Pete parked at some spot that really upset a local woman, who stopped and berated him. There was no sign saying we couldn’t park there, but she had strong feelings on the matter! I had hiked off to get a better view of the craters and to look at birds, so I fortunately missed this whole exchange.

After getting yelled at, Pete needed a beer. I’m teasing! But we did want to try the brewery across the street. The hostess at our lodge had told us about the excellent all-you-can-eat soup. She was right; the fish soup was quite tasty. The other was a vegan cauliflower one that didn’t look very appetizing so we didn’t try it. This was honestly the only place we got beer that we didn’t much care for, too. Given that, I won’t call them out by name. But when we finished, we walked over to the ice cream around the corner. Again, just so-so, but my raspberry salted licorice was a unique flavor. And all that held us over for the rest of the afternoon.

After we finished eating, we visited the lava fields of Dimmuborgir. This area has a ton of hiking paths, and I would have loved to see more of them if we’d spent more days in this area! There wasn’t time to do all of them, but we did two connected trails. My favorite parts were the Yule Lads cave and Kirkja, which is shaped like a cathedral.

That hike about did us in, but we had more to see. So we drove back out of Myvatn to see the Krafla Geothermal Area east of the town. There is a geothermal power station here, which harnesses the heat from the ground to make electricity. Within the area there’s an active crater called Leirhnjúkur, but it was a long hike we didn’t do due to a lack of time and having worn ourselves out at Dimmuborgir. Pete flew and filmed it. We then went to Viti Crater, which was a (relatively) short and easy walk from the parking lot up the side of a crater around a gorgeous blue lake. I climbed to the top while Pete flew, and it was well worth my effort!

After doing all of that, we needed to call it a day. We decided to grab beer and a pizza and enjoy it back at the lodge and watch TV. We literally had no energy for anything else.

Day 9 – Mývatn to Siglufjörður

Somewhere between Mývatn and Siglufjörður we got lost. I mean, we made it to both sides of Goðafoss, the waterfall you see here. While there, we (mostly) maneuvered our way around yet another huge tour bus full of people. Honestly, it’s pretty amazing how many people get bussed in to these well-known landmarks. Goðafoss has parking lots on both sides of the river, allowing you to see it from a variety of viewpoints. Oh, and Goðafoss means “waterfall of the Gods”.

We stopped for lunch in Akureyri, the “capital of the north” – and actually saw stoplights again.

But then we ended up on a looooong gravel road to nowhere. You can see here how dirty the rental car got in the process. We went through two tunnels – read this carefully – that are bi-directional yet one lane. One side has to pull over if they see headlights coming from the other direction. One of those tunnels was about 5km long, but the other was fairly short. Then we ended up driving around the Siglufjörður fjord where the road kept turning to gravel in places where the asphalt had been washed out. And Iceland isn’t big on guard rails.

But finally we got to our stay for the night, a place called Herring House. Our host Helga met us at the front door. We were chatting and she said she had gone to university in Florida before coming back to Reykjavik and meeting her husband. One guess where she went? FIT in Melbourne! She said she has guests from the US all the time but has never had someone from Melbourne. She got her degree in Aviation Psychology and then worked in recruiting and training when she returned to Iceland. What a small world.

Herring House has a main guesthouse, but it also has these little cabins out back, which were so cute and cozy. We took time to enjoy the hot tub on property, which was a delight after that crazy drive. Then we got quick showers – outdoors, as the cabins didn’t have them – and walked down to the town to look around and to eat dinner. The town church, Siglufjarðarkirkja, was in front of Herring House and has a long staircase on the other side.

Otherwise we just walked around the harbor taking in some of the sights.

Day 10 – Siglufjörður to Stykkishólmur

On Tuesday we drove back out on the scary road out of Siglufjörður. We enjoyed the scenery a little more this day, since we were fresh off a good night’s sleep. Nearby is a bright orange lighthouse called Sauðanesviti, which I took a photo of from the car window while Pete was driving.

Our endpoint was Stykkishólmur. We knew this was going to be a lot of driving (5 hours!), so we only had planned one stop: Hofsós. We had originally intended to go to their infinity pool, but the weather was bad and with Pete’s developing bronchitis, it wasn’t a good idea. We just drove through the town and went to the the turf church there. I was sad to miss the pool but the turf church, Grafarkirkja, was amazing! It’s quite famous, and it’s the oldest turf church in Iceland. You can’t go inside, but it’s simply beautiful from the outside. And the aerial views are incredible!

Here is Pete’s video of the church:

Along the way later we stopped at a different turf church, known as Víðimýri. This one was open to visitors for a donation, and we enjoyed speaking with the docent inside. He said they still have services on Easter and Christmas, and hold special events such as weddings.

When we arrived in Stykkishólmur. it was pouring rain and very windy, but we did see a beautiful double-rainbow out of our cottage window. We went to dinner and then went back to our rental, where it was warm and dry. Honestly, it was really nice to have some normal downtime to just watch television and relax. The last photos in this group are from Stykkishólmur the next morning.