Explore Mývatn and the northeast
While Mývatn’s immediate surrounds appear fairly stable, the plateau rising just outside town at Bjarnarflag and extending northeast is anything but serene, the barren, pock-marked landscape pouring out lively quantities of steam and – when the mood takes it – lava. This being Iceland you can see not only how destructive such events have been, but also how their energy has been harnessed. Alongside power stations and even an underground “bakery”, there are the Jarðböðin nature baths, building on the centuries-old tradition of using the area’s plentiful geothermal water for bathing. Beyond here, still on the Ringroad, the bubbling mud pools at Hverir are definitely worth a stop en route to the Krafla volcano, reached by a detour north along a sealed track. The mountain and the neighbouring plains at Leirhnjúkur, still dangerously hot after a particularly violent session during the 1980s, are Mývatn’s most geologically active region.
Read More-
Jarðböðin Nature Baths
Jarðböðin Nature Baths
Only 4km from Reykjahlíð, Bjarnarflag is a thermal zone on the lower slopes of Dalfjall, a long, faulted ridge pushed up by subterranean pressures that runs northeast to Krafla itself. Bjarnarflag has a small geothermal power station (Iceland’s first, built in 1969), whose outflow has been harnessed to create the Jarðböðin Nature Baths, the local version of Reykjavík’s Blue Lagoon. It’s an exceptional setting – fractured orange hills rise behind and the poolside overlooks Mývatn itself – where you can loll to your heart’s content in milky-blue waters heated to 38–40˚C. Just remove any copper or silver jewellery before entering the water, since the high sulphur content of the water can cause discoloration. In addition to the pool, there’s a café, hot pot and a couple of steam saunas.
-
Krafla and Viti
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
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.
