The Most Beautiful Canyons and Gorges in Iceland
5 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful canyons and gorges in Iceland are Fjaðrárgljúfur, Almannagjá and Ásbyrgi. The list covers 5 canyons and gorges. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Iceland is a young island split by the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and loaded with ice, and both forces cut canyons fast. Glacial rivers heavy with sediment saw through soft palagonite and lava, catastrophic meltwater floods carve whole valleys in days, and the spreading of the plates opens fissures that grow wider every year.
Fjaðrárgljúfur in the south is a winding canyon about 100 m deep, carved by meltwater since the end of the last Ice Age into layers of tuff. Almannagjá at Þingvellir is a rift on the edge of the North American plate, where Iceland's parliament, the Althing, first met in 930. Ásbyrgi in the north is a horseshoe-shaped canyon with walls up to about 100 m, formed by glacial floods and said in legend to be the hoofprint of Odin's horse Sleipnir. Stuðlagil in the east revealed its walls of basalt columns only after a hydropower dam upstream lowered the glacial river Jökla.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fjaðrárgljúfur | Canyon | |
| 2 | Almannagjá | Canyon | |
| 3 | Ásbyrgi | Canyon | |
| 4 | Jökulsárgljúfur | Canyon | |
| 5 | Stuðlagil | Canyon |
01 Fjaðrárgljúfur
Iceland63.777° N 18.176° W
Jerzy Strzelecki · CC BY-SA 3.0 A path of about a mile climbs along the eastern edge, passing a series of lookouts, and ends at a viewing platform facing a slender waterfall that pours down the western wall at the head of the canyon. After the gorge appeared in a pop music video, the sudden surge of visitors threatened its fragile vegetation, and in 2019 the authorities closed it for a time to let the ground recover — a reminder that the moss here grows slowly and should be admired from the path.
Did you know? The Environment Agency of Iceland estimated that more than a million people visited the canyon in the few years after the video appeared.
02 Almannagjá
Iceland · 37 km from Selfoss64.261° N 21.122° W
Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0 In the 19th century Þingvellir became a symbol of the Icelandic national movement, and the painter Ásgrímur Jónsson returned to it in well over a hundred works. It was declared Iceland's first national park in 1928 and was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2004. Until the 1960s the old road from Reykjavík to Þingvellir ran along the floor of Almannagjá itself.
Did you know? The plain beneath the cliff has sunk by nearly four metres since the Althing first met here in 930.
03 Ásbyrgi
Iceland66.014° N 16.503° W
Catherine Christopoulou · CC BY-SA 4.0 That sheltered pocket has made the canyon one of the greener corners of north Iceland. Native birch and willow grow on the floor, joined between 1947 and 1977 by plantings of spruce, larch and pine, and Botnstjörn attracts a variety of waterfowl. Ásbyrgi forms part of Vatnajökull National Park, in its northern section around the gorge of Jökulsá á Fjöllum, the same river that drops over Dettifoss further upstream.
Did you know? The floods that carved the canyon probably burst from glacier-dammed lakes, and a huge waterfall once thundered at its innermost end.
04 Jökulsárgljúfur
Iceland65.929° N 16.537° W
Bernd Thaller from Graz, Austria · CC BY 2.0 At the northern end lies Ásbyrgi, a horseshoe-shaped gorge with sheer walls up to around 100 metres high, enclosing a quiet birch woodland and a small pond. Geologists see it as a dry former channel of the same river, carved by catastrophic floods; local tradition holds that it is the hoofprint of Sleipnir, the eight-legged horse of the god Odin, pressed into the earth as he galloped across the sky. Jökulsárgljúfur was protected as a national park in 1973, and Ásbyrgi was added to it a few years later. Since 2008 both have formed the northern part of Vatnajökull National Park, one of the largest protected areas in Europe.
Did you know? The canyon was carved largely by catastrophic glacial outburst floods after the last Ice Age.
05 Stuðlagil
Iceland65.163° N 15.307° W
ArniGael · CC BY-SA 4.0 There are two ways to see it. From the west bank, at the farm of Grund, a set of steps and platforms gives a view down into the canyon from above. On the east side, a walk from the Klaustursel area leads along the river to the canyon floor and passes Stuðlafoss, a waterfall framed by its own basalt columns. The river itself is fast and powerful, and entering it is forbidden. In spring, between early May and mid June, pink-footed geese nest in the area and walkers are asked to keep to the marked paths.
Did you know? The dam that revealed the canyon, Kárahnjúkar, is 193 metres tall, the largest concrete-faced rock-fill dam in Europe.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful canyons and gorges in Iceland?
- On our list, Fjaðrárgljúfur ranks first, followed by Almannagjá and Ásbyrgi.
- How was Ásbyrgi formed?
- Ásbyrgi was carved by catastrophic glacial floods of the river Jökulsá á Fjöllum after the last Ice Age, which later shifted course and left the horseshoe-shaped canyon dry. Norse legend explains it as the hoofprint of Odin's eight-legged horse Sleipnir.
- Why does Almannagjá keep widening?
- Almannagjá lies on the boundary between the North American and Eurasian plates, which are pulling apart by roughly 2 cm a year, so the fissures at Þingvellir slowly widen and the valley floor sinks.
- How many canyons and gorges are on this list in Iceland?
- The list covers 5 canyons and gorges.