Dimmuborgir

Dimmuborgir looks less like a lava field than a ruined city: a sunken maze of black towers, arches, hollow chambers and leaning pillars on the eastern side of Lake Mývatn in north Iceland. The Icelandic name joins dimmu, "dark", and borgir, "castles" or "fortresses", and walking among the formations it is easy to see why the first people to name them reached for the language of walls and citadels.

The landscape is the remains of a lava lake. A little over two thousand years ago a large eruption along the Þrengslaborgir and Lúdentsborgir crater row to the east sent lava flooding into this hollow, where it pooled over marshy, waterlogged ground. Steam from the boiling wetland forced its way up through the molten rock, and around each vent the lava chilled into a pipe or column, some as thin as a drainpipe and others several metres across. When the still-liquid lava eventually drained away towards the Mývatn basin, the roof of the lake collapsed, leaving the hardened pillars and chambers standing below the level of the surrounding lava surface. The tallest survivors suggest the lake was at least ten metres deep. The best known formation, Kirkjan ("the Church"), is a vaulted lava arch open at both ends, its shape recalling a church nave.

Folklore has long given the place a darker reputation. Icelandic tradition holds that Dimmuborgir is a passage between the earth and the underworld, and in later Christian lore it was told as the spot where Satan landed after being thrown out of heaven. More recently the formations served as a filming location for the wildling camp in HBO's Game of Thrones, and a Norwegian black metal band took its name from the site.

Getting there

Dimmuborgir lies just south of the village of Reykjahlíð on the shore of Lake Mývatn, about 6 km away. The nearest city is Akureyri, about 56 km to the west in a straight line, and Akureyri Airport (AEY) is about 55 km away. The Ring Road (Route 1) passes through the Mývatn area, and the site is reached by a short side road from the lake's eastern shore.