Torfajökull

Torfajökull is a volcano that hides in plain sight. Instead of a single cone, it is a vast caldera about 18 by 12 kilometres in Iceland's southern highlands, and inside it lies the largest expanse of rhyolite in the country. This pale, silica-rich rock weathers into hills of grey, brown, pink and green, streaked with yellow where sulphur seeps from the ground, and it gives the area around Landmannalaugar the painted look that has made it one of the best-loved landscapes in Iceland.

The heat that shaped these hills is still close to the surface. The caldera holds one of the largest geothermal fields in Iceland, full of steaming vents, boiling mud pools and hot springs. At Landmannalaugar, on its northern edge, warm water wells up at bathing temperature beside a black lava flow, and at Hrafntinnusker, higher up, warm streams and fumaroles have melted caves into the ice, something rarely seen in Iceland. The glacier that gave the volcano its name has shrunk to a remnant on the south-eastern rim. Local tradition holds that it is named after Torfi, a farmer who fled a plague with his household and hid in a sheltered valley beneath the ice.

The volcano's story reaches far back. Its rhyolite plateau began forming hundreds of thousands of years ago, and around 55,000 years ago it produced a huge explosive eruption whose ash fell across the North Atlantic. Its later eruptions came in step with fissures from the neighbouring Bárðarbunga system. One of them, around 877, spread a thin layer of ash across the whole island just as the first Norse settlers arrived; that layer now helps archaeologists date the earliest farms in Iceland. The most recent eruption, in 1477, poured out lava flows on the volcano's northern side.

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.

Getting there

The nearest town is Hella, about 60 km to the west on the Ring Road; Reykjavík lies about 140 km away in a straight line. The practical airports are Reykjavík Domestic Airport (RKV) and Keflavík International Airport (KEF), about 170 km away. Landmannalaugar is reached from the Ring Road by highland mountain roads (F-roads), and on foot along the Laugavegur from Þórsmörk.