Hverir at Námaskarð: the steam vents

Hverir is the closest Iceland comes to looking like somewhere else entirely: a hillside of orange and grey mud, boiling pools, and steam coming out of the ground hard enough to be audible from the car park. It is free, it is directly on Route 1, and it takes twenty minutes.

It also smells strongly of sulphur, and that is not a detail you can plan around. If hydrogen sulphide turns your stomach, twenty minutes is about nineteen too many.

What you are looking at

The field sits on the eastern flank of Námafjall, in the Krafla volcanic system, and the heat under it is shallow — this is one of the hottest accessible geothermal areas in the country. Because there is little groundwater, the surface water is acidic rather than alkaline, and that acid breaks the rock down into clay. The clay is what gives it the colour: iron compounds oxidising into ochre, rust and grey.

There are two kinds of vent. Mud pots are the grey bubbling pools, thick as porridge, at around 80 to 100°C. Fumaroles are the steam vents proper, roaring out of cones of pale rock, and the steam is hotter than boiling.

Nothing grows here. That is not a stylistic observation — the soil is too acidic for plants, which is why the ground is bare right up to the edge of the field and green beyond it.

The rule that matters

Stay on the paths, and keep children close.

The crust between the marked routes is thin in places and what is underneath is near boiling. People have been badly burned here, and the injuries are not minor ones. The ropes and posts are not there to protect the scenery, they are there because the ground is not reliably solid. There is no fence around the whole site and no one supervising it.

Two smaller things. The steam will leave a sulphur smell in wool and hair that a single wash may not shift. And in a strong easterly the steam blows flat across the path, which is both the best photograph and the moment to keep your footing.

How long, and when

Twenty to thirty minutes. There is a car park, a toilet block and nothing else — no café, no visitor centre, no shelter. On a wet day in November there is nowhere to stand out of the wind, and the site is more exposed than it looks.

It is open all year and never closes, being a hillside. Winter is arguably better: the steam is far more visible against cold air, and the snow melts around each vent so the colours show through in patches. The car park is ploughed because Route 1 runs past it.

Drive 400 metres up the pass to the Námaskarð viewpoint afterwards if the weather is clear. From the top you see the whole field below and Mývatn laid out west.

Which tours stop

Hverir is a standard fixture of the Mývatn day, never the destination.

The shortest is Arctic Adventures’ Mývatn, Goðafoss & Grjótagjá half-day from Akureyri at €127 for six hours. Full days give it more time and add Dimmuborgir and the pseudo-craters: The Traveling Viking’s full-day Lake Mývatn classic is from €182, and Imagine Iceland’s Lake Mývatn and Goðafoss day tour is eight hours from €166.

Star Travel’s Lake Mývatn & Geothermal Springs is eight hours from €183 and finishes at the Mývatn Nature Baths, which is the right order — the baths afterwards, not before, or you will spend the afternoon smelling of the morning.

If you are already staying at Mývatn rather than Akureyri, Imagine Iceland’s Lake Mývatn day tour starting from the lake is five hours from €187 and skips the two hours of driving each way.

Our honest take

Stop, spend twenty-five minutes, keep to the path. It is one of the few places in Iceland where the photographs genuinely undersell it, because they cannot carry the noise or the heat coming off the ground.

Do not build a day around it. Hverir is a stop on the Mývatn loop, and the loop — steam vents, the lava pillars at Dimmuborgir, the pseudo-craters at Skútustaðir and a hot bath at the end — is what is worth the €127 to €183. The half-day at €127 is the best value of those if your time in the north is short.

Wash your hair that evening.