Kerið crater: worth the stop?
The red crater on the Golden Circle, and the only stop on it that charges. What the €4 buys, how long it takes, and which tours include it.
The short version
- Kerið is the only Golden Circle stop with an entry fee. It is about €4, paid at the gate.
- Twenty minutes is enough: once round the rim, or down the steps to the water and back.
- It charges because the land is privately owned. Þingvellir, Geysir and Gullfoss are not.
- Most Golden Circle coaches include it, but not all. Check before you book if it matters.
Yes, but only because it is on the way and costs almost nothing. Kerið is a red volcanic crater with a green lake in the bottom, twenty minutes of walking, and the fourth stop on a day that already has three better ones. Nobody flies to Iceland for it. Nobody regrets the four euros either.
What it is
A crater about 270 metres long and 55 metres deep, in the Grímsnes volcanic zone north of Selfoss. The rock is unusually red — iron-rich scoria rather than the black basalt everything else around here is made of — and there is a shallow lake at the bottom that sits at the local water table rather than being fed by a stream.
The interesting part is how it formed. The old explanation was an explosion crater. The current one is that this was a cone volcano that emptied its magma chamber and collapsed into the hole, which is why the sides are so steep and so neatly circular. It is roughly 3,000 years old, young enough that the shape has not weathered out.
The fee, and why it exists
Kerið is on private land, owned by a group of local farmers. In 2013 they started charging admission, which caused a small national argument at the time, and the money goes on the paths, the steps and the car park. It is currently 450 krónur — call it €4 at today’s rate — and you pay in cash or card at a hut by the gate.
This is the thing worth understanding about the Golden Circle: Þingvellir is a national park, Geysir and Gullfoss are in public ownership, and their car parks are the only charge. Kerið is the exception. If you are self-driving and reading that everything on the route is free, that is where the confusion comes from.
You can pre-pay as Kerið Admission at €4 so you are not fumbling for a card in the wind, which is a small thing but a real one in February.
How long, and what to actually do
Twenty minutes covers it. There is a gravel path the whole way round the rim — ten minutes at a slow walk, with the view changing more than you expect as you go round — and a flight of wooden and stone steps down the shallow end to the water.
Go down. Most coach passengers walk half the rim, photograph the lake from above and get back on the bus, and the crater looks completely different from the bottom, with the red walls above you. The steps are steep in places and slippery when wet.
The lake changes colour with the season and the light: opaque green in summer from algae, darker and clearer in autumn, frozen and white for much of the winter. It is between seven and fourteen metres deep depending who you ask and how much rain there has been.
Which tours include it
Not all of them, and the difference is real if you have made up your mind about seeing it.
BusTravel Iceland’s Grand Golden Circle Tour includes Kerið, from €87 for eight and a half hours — though their own note says the midday departure skips it, which is exactly the sort of detail that ends up as a disappointment. Their afternoon tour is also from €87, and the small group with Friðheimar is from €112.
EastWest name it in the title: Golden Circle and Waterfalls, with Friðheimar Farm and Kerið is from €137 in a small group, nine hours.
If Kerið is not mentioned in the itinerary, assume it is not included. It sits about twenty minutes off the direct Gullfoss-to-Reykjavík line, and operators drop it to save time more often than they advertise.
The honest case against
It is a hole in the ground. A handsome, tidy, well-photographed hole, but the Golden Circle already gives you a continental rift, an erupting hot spring and a two-tier waterfall in a canyon, and Kerið is not in that company.
In winter, when the light is gone by half past three, we would rather you spent the twenty minutes at Gullfoss.
Our honest take
Take it if your tour includes it. Do not pay extra or pick a worse tour to get it.
Self-driving? Stop. It is four euros, it is signposted off Route 35, the car park is right there, and it breaks up the drive back to Reykjavík at the point where everyone is starting to flag. Go down the steps, walk back round the top, and you have had the whole of it in twenty minutes.
