The glacial lagoon opened up before us after a short walk from the nearby parking lot. A little farther along the cliff, Svínafellsjökull itself came into view.
The shore rose steeply, like the upper wall of a U-shaped valley. Loose earth and stones seemed to lie on top, and the edge looked ready to give way. There apparently had been a fatal fall at Svínafellsjökull the previous year. It was certainly a place to watch my step.
In 2016, we could still drive to a basic parking area right in front of the glacier. Cracks had been identified in Svínafellsheiði, the mountainside above Svínafellsjökull, as early as 2014. More were found in 2018, prompting warnings of a possible large rockslide. The road to the old parking area was subsequently closed to vehicles, and a new parking area has apparently been established farther away.
The glacier up close. What a sight!
Looking up at Svínafellsjökull
The glacier’s snout, almost straight ahead
Where the glacial lagoon begins
Svínafellsjökull has apparently appeared in films and television series including Interstellar, Batman Begins, and Game of Thrones. I could see why: the landscape would look quite at home as a frozen planet or an unexplored wilderness.
From this lagoon, it is about an hour's drive around the southern side of Öræfajökull to Jökulsárlón. Several glaciers and glacial lagoons can be seen along the way.
I took the next three photographs in April, from a roadside parking area a little before Fjallsárlón. The first looks back west, with the Fjallsá River flowing across the sand plain in the foreground and the mountains around Hnappavellir beyond. This is Öræfajökull from another angle. The second shows the broad expanse of ice stretching towards Fjallsjökull, and the third shows the Hrútárjökull glacier tongue almost directly ahead.
Öræfajökull, imposing even from the east
A glacier beyond the power lines
A glacier tongue
I passed through here three times, always under cloudy skies. Unlike sunlit Svínafellsjökull, this landscape had a lonely, desolate air. I did not make the detour to Fjallsárlón.
Svínafellsjökull was the only glacier tongue I saw at close quarters on these Iceland trips. Looking back, I am reminded of just how imposing it was.
