This beautiful canyon is around 2km long and at some points almost 100m deep. It is located near Iceland’s Ring Road, a short distance from the village of Kirkjubæjarklaustur. A set of walking paths starting at the car park makes access quite straightforward.
The relative ease of access, however, creates its own problems. In the mid-2010s Justin Bieber filmed a music video here and the canyon also served as a filming location for the Game of Thrones series. I have not seen either, but lots of other people apparently have and the canyon became a must-see destination for far too many tourists. In order to prevent damage to the site, the authorities closed it off for a while at various times during the last few years.
We were lucky to find the canyon open and there were not too many other people around, despite the lovely mid-summer weather at the time. And before you ask: no, I have not the slightest idea how to pronounce Fjaðrárgljúfur!
Nearby Kirkjubæjarklaustur also has a separate attraction – its so-called ‘church floor’.
The hexagonal ’tiles’ look like man-made flooring, but are actually the tops of naturally-formed basalt pillars. (Columnar basalt forms when cooling magma contracts.) It is thought that until some 9000 years ago this area was covered by the sea, i.e. the ‘church floor’ was the sea bed. There was never a church, or any other building, on the site.
