The Most Beautiful Volcanoes in Iceland
7 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful volcanoes in Iceland are Hverfjall, Snæfellsjökull and Öræfajökull. The list covers 7 volcanoes. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Iceland exists because a mantle hotspot sits under the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and nearly every kind of volcano is found there: fissures, shield volcanoes, calderas and explosion craters. The island is young and largely bare of forest, so volcanic forms stay crisp and visible rather than hidden under vegetation.
Hverfjall near Lake Mývatn is a tephra ring about 1 km across, a near-perfect circle of dark ash. The Laki Craters mark the fissure of the 1783–84 eruption, a row of more than a hundred cones whose gases caused famine in Iceland and a haze across Europe. Askja is a caldera in the central highlands holding Öskjuvatn, one of the deepest lakes in the country, beside the warm crater of Víti. Þríhnúkagígur near Reykjavík is a dormant volcano whose emptied magma chamber is large enough to descend into.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hverfjall | Volcano | |
| 2 | Snæfellsjökull | Volcano | |
| 3 | Öræfajökull | Volcano | |
| 4 | Laki Craters (Lakagígar) | Volcano | |
| 5 | Torfajökull | Volcano | |
| 6 | Askja | Volcano | |
| 7 | Þríhnúkagígur | Volcano |
01 Hverfjall
Iceland65.604° N 16.872° W
Stephen · CC BY 2.0 From the rim the view takes in Lake Mývatn, the surrounding lava fields and the lava labyrinth of Dimmuborgir just to the south. The loose tephra slopes are fragile, and only two marked paths, from the northwest and from the south, lead to the rim; walking on the slopes elsewhere is not allowed.
Did you know? A distinctive black tephra layer from Hverfjall's eruption serves geologists as a dated time marker in the soils around Mývatn.
02 Snæfellsjökull
Iceland64.807° N 23.776° W
Anjali Kiggal · CC BY-SA 4.0 In summer the saddle near the top can be reached by walking, while the true summit calls for technical ice climbing. For most visitors the best experience is the circuit of the peninsula itself, watching the dome change with the light from one side of the mountain to the other.
03 Öræfajökull
Iceland64.025° N 16.642° W
Ferdinand Stöhr fellowferdi · CC0 Today the volcano lies within Vatnajökull National Park, and its western foot at Skaftafell is one of the most celebrated corners of Iceland, where birch woods, waterfalls and ice tongues meet within a short walk. The crevassed tongue of Svínafellsjökull has stood in for distant worlds on screen: scenes of Interstellar and Batman Begins were filmed on it. The ascent of Hvannadalshnúkur is a classic Icelandic mountaineering route, a long glacier climb that ends on a summit with views across the ice cap and down to the Atlantic.
Did you know? Before 1362 the volcano was called Knappafellsjökull and the district below it Litlahérað.
04 Laki Craters (Lakagígar)
Lakagígar
Iceland64.067° N 18.230° W
Image by jackmac34 from Pixabay Across Europe a sulphurous haze spread within days, reaching Prague, Berlin, Paris and Britain by late June 1783. Gilbert White described a blood-coloured sun over Hampshire; thousands died, and the following winter was one of the harshest on record on both sides of the Atlantic. Laki belongs to the volcanic system of Grímsvötn, which erupted at the same time under the ice. The craters were protected in 1971 and are part of Vatnajökull National Park; a path climbs Laki itself for a view along the whole crater row.
Did you know? In the bitter winter that followed, the Mississippi froze at New Orleans and ice floes were reported in the Gulf of Mexico.
05 Torfajökull
Iceland63.894° N 19.010° W
Chmee2 / Valtameri · CC BY 3.0 Much of the area lies within the Fjallabak Nature Reserve, protected since 1979. The Laugavegur, Iceland's best-known long-distance hiking trail, starts at Landmannalaugar and crosses the volcano's flanks on its way of some 55 km south to the wooded valley of Þórsmörk.
Did you know? Ash from an eruption around 877 formed a layer that helps date the first farms of the Norse settlement.
06 Askja
Iceland65.030° N 16.750° W
User Wolfgangbeyer on de.wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0 Beside the lake is Víti, a small explosion crater from the same eruption, whose steep sides cradle a pool of milky, sulphur-scented geothermal water. Bathing there is a long-standing tradition, though the path down is steep and slippery. The place also holds two well-known stories. In 1907 the German geologist Walter von Knebel and the painter Max Rudloff rowed out on Öskjuvatn in a canvas boat and were never seen again; von Knebel's fiancée, Ina von Grumbkow, came to Iceland the next year to search for them.
Did you know? Before 1875 the volcano was almost unknown; that year's ashfall poisoned grazing in the East Fjords for years and pushed many people to emigrate.
07 Þríhnúkagígur
Iceland · 19.9 km from Reykjavík63.998° N 21.699° W
Uaiecs · CC BY 3.0 The cave explorer Árni B. Stefánsson first descended into the crater in 1974, and it was explored and mapped in detail in 1991. A cable-suspended work platform, similar to a gondola, was installed for a scientific expedition in 2010, and since 2012 small groups of visitors have been lowered down the throat of the volcano in it. The crater group has been a protected natural monument since 1973. In 2015 the Icelandic band Kaleo recorded a live performance in the cavity.
Did you know? In 2016 Chino Moreno of the band Deftones gave what was billed as the first public concert inside a volcano's magma chamber, for an audience of about 20.
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 volcanoes in Iceland?
- On our list, Hverfjall ranks first, followed by Snæfellsjökull and Öræfajökull.
- What was the Laki eruption?
- Between June 1783 and February 1784 the Laki fissure poured out lava and huge amounts of fluorine and sulphur gases. The resulting famine killed around a fifth of Iceland's population, and a sulphurous haze spread over much of Europe.
- Why did astronauts train at Askja?
- Apollo astronauts trained in the Askja area in the 1960s because its barren volcanic landscape was considered a good analogue for the geology they would study on the Moon.
- How many volcanoes are on this list in Iceland?
- The list covers 7 volcanoes.
- Which is the highest of the volcanoes in Iceland?
- Öræfajökull (Iceland) is the highest on this list, at 2,110 metres.