Borgarnes: the first stop north
An hour from Reykjavík, and the town everyone drives through without stopping. The Settlement Centre, the lava cave nearby, and why the petrol station is not the town.
The short version
- Borgarnes is 74 km from Reykjavík, about an hour through the Hvalfjörður tunnel.
- The Settlement Centre covers the settlement and Egil's saga in two exhibitions of about half an hour each.
- Viðgelmir, the big lava cave, is 50 minutes east. Guided entry from €65.
- The petrol station by the bridge is not the town. The old town is out on the point.
Borgarnes is the first place worth stopping north of Reykjavík, and almost nobody stops. The Ring Road crosses the fjord on a long causeway, there is a petrol station and a supermarket right where it lands, and ninety per cent of traffic fills up there and drives on believing it has seen the town.
The town is the other way — out along the spit, past the roundabout, where the old houses are.
The Settlement Centre
Two exhibitions in a pair of restored warehouses by the harbour, each about half an hour with an audio guide. The first covers the settlement of Iceland: who came, from where, and what it took to cross the Atlantic in an open boat with livestock. The second tells Egil’s saga, which happened here — Egill Skallagrímsson farmed at Borg, a couple of kilometres up the road.
It is the best hour and a half in the district by a wide margin. The Egil’s saga half in particular does something rare: it makes a thousand-year-old text about a violent, difficult poet feel like a story about a person rather than a set text. If you have never read a saga and suspect you never will, do this instead.
Up the hill behind the town is Skallagrímsgarður, a small park built around a mound said to be the burial place of Egill’s father. It takes five minutes and is free, and it lands much better after the exhibition than before it.
Viðgelmir, the cave
Fifty minutes east, up in Hvítársíða, is Viðgelmir — one of the largest lava tubes in Iceland, with a walkway built through it so you are not scrambling. The Cave run it: Cave Explorer is an hour and a half from €65, and there is a shuttle from Húsafell at the same €65 if you would rather not drive the last stretch of gravel.
What makes it worth the detour over the Reykjavík lava tunnel is the ice. In winter and spring the entrance section carries ice formations that the closer, warmer cave does not get. It is also considerably bigger inside than the photographs suggest.
The Silver Circle
Borgarnes is the gateway to what the region markets as the Silver Circle: Deildartunguhver, the highest-flowing hot spring in Europe; Hraunfossar, where a river seeps out of the base of a lava field along a kilometre of bank rather than arriving as a stream; and Reykholt, where Snorri Sturluson wrote and was killed in his cellar in 1241.
Simply Iceland’s Silver Circle in West Iceland is nine hours from €177. Arctic Adventures combine it with the cave as the Silver Circle & Viðgelmir Lava Cave day, ten hours from €188. If you are driving it yourself, Krauma at €57 is the geothermal baths built on the Deildartunguhver outflow — quiet, adult, and an hour is plenty.
We have a longer guide on Krauma and the Silver Circle if that is the day you are planning.
Why stop at all
Two honest reasons.
It is exactly an hour from Reykjavík, which makes it the natural break on any drive north or west. The Hvalfjörður tunnel takes six kilometres of that hour and costs a toll; the old road round the fjord takes about fifty minutes longer and is far prettier if you have the time.
And the fjord itself is good at low light. There is a shore path from the town centre round the point with Hafnarfjall across the water, twenty minutes, and on a still evening it is one of those walks that makes you reconsider driving straight through next time.
The honest downside
There is not much here. An exhibition, a park, a shore path, a supermarket. If you are not going on to the cave or the Silver Circle, Borgarnes is a ninety-minute stop rather than a destination, and anyone selling it as more than that is selling you something.
It also rains a great deal in Borgarfjörður. That is partly the point of the exhibition.
Our honest take
Stop, but do not stay — unless you are doing the Silver Circle the next morning, in which case a night here saves you two hours of driving and gets you to Hraunfossar before the tour buses.
Book the Cave Explorer at €65 if you have a car and half a day. Everyone else: park past the petrol station, do the Settlement Centre, walk up to the mound, and get back on the road having actually seen the place.
