A Rainy Sojourn at Mývatn: Nature’s Enchantment
On a wet afternoon in northern Iceland, we crest a hill and Mývatn opens up before us — green-grey and vast, half-swallowed by mist. The windshield wipers keep their steady beat. We drop down a slick stretch of Route One and pull over by the shore, and even through rain-streaked glass the view stops you cold.
Mývatn isn’t Iceland’s largest or deepest lake, but it holds its own against anything the country has to offer. Pseudocraters crumble at the water’s edge, surrounded by moss-covered lava fields. Birds wheel overhead and dip through the reeds, pulled in by the midges and the shallow, productive water below. Out on the surface, rocky stacks catch the chop thrown up by the wind.
Standing there listening to rain tap against every leaf and stone, I feel my breath catch. Like so much of Iceland, this place doesn’t wait for good weather to show you what it is. Even in the middle of a summer downpour, Mývatn has something you can’t quite shake.
Contrasting Shores
The northern and southern shores feel like different lakes entirely. We start on the north side, where the Ring Road cuts through rolling farmland. Wet sheep stand in clusters on the hillocks; lambs sprint through the rain for no apparent reason. There aren’t many pull-offs, so we slow right down and press close to the windows. The views keep coming — steep red cones of tephra and ash, geothermal steam punching up through the ground, and the lake always there beside you. When the road drops to water level it feels like you’re practically skimming across the surface alongside the gulls.
The eastern side takes you through a fractured lava field and into Reykjahlíð, the quiet village that anchors this end of the lake. Just beyond it, the Hverir geothermal area turns the landscape from mossy grey-green into wide bands of umber and blood-red soil. Walkways have been added since I was last here five years ago, and tour buses were parked three deep, but none of that dulls it. The fumaroles still billow sulphurous steam into the damp air like they’re indifferent to the crowd entirely.
We catch our first real break in the weather at the Mývatn Nature Baths. The pool is quiet — a few clusters of tourists, a swim-up bar doing modest trade. With most of the water to myself, I drift around hunting the hottest currents. After about half an hour the sky darkens again and rain starts speckling the milky surface. We towel off and get back on the road, properly warmed through for the first time all day.
A Landscape of Legends
Heading south, the road passes Dimmuborgir — the “dark cities” — a tangle of black lava formations that draws hikers for good reason. Ancient lava flowed over wetland and lake shallows here, the violent reaction leaving behind pillars and arches that look like nothing else in Iceland. In the drizzle, the jagged columns rise like disembodied fingers against the grey sky. It’s genuinely eerie, and I mean that as a compliment.
A little further on, Höfði juts into the lake as an unexpected patch of green. Trails loop through the trees to a handful of viewpoints, and the light under the canopy shifts to something richer and darker than anywhere else we’ve been today. At the tip of the peninsula, the lake spreads out in every direction and the birds are loud. Mývatn has a particular kind of energy here — hard to name, easy to feel.
An Evening Retreat
By evening the light is dropping and the clouds are building again. We pile back into the car, heater cranked, scrolling through options on our phones. The campsite pizza place near Reykjahlíð — closed. The fish and chips spot we’d spotted earlier — almost certainly closed. We point the car toward Bistro Sel.
It’s open, and the warmth that hits you at the door after a full day in the rain is hard to overstate. We’re starving. Two bowls of kjötsúpa and a Mývatn Öl each — the beer brewed in a nanobrewery just down the road — and the world starts to feel manageable again. It’s exactly what a long wet day requires.
Nature’s Final Bow
Our last stop is Skútustaðagígar, a cluster of small hikeable craters just across the road. We set off up the path into what turns out to be the worst weather of the entire day. Hood pulled tight, rain horizontal, I make it to the viewpoint. The lake below is shivering in the wind. Even the birds have gone quiet.
It’s been a long one — driving, hiking, soaking, eating — and we’ve still only seen a fraction of what Mývatn has. The place has a way of folding time in on itself, slowing everything down until the lake and the lava and the birds are the only things that seem real. It may not be the largest or deepest lake in Iceland, but it might just be the one that stays with you longest.
This journey was part of the Summer Ring Road cover story trip. A Lux 4×4 Camper was provided by Go Campers — book yours at gocampers.is.
