Krauma and Húsafell are what the Golden Circle was before the coaches
West Iceland's Silver Circle — Hraunfossar, Deildartunguhver, Krauma and Húsafell — as the quiet alternative to the Golden Circle, by car or by tour.
An hour and a half north of Reykjavík, past Borgarnes and up the Borgarfjörður valley, is a loop the tourist boards call the Silver Circle. Few people outside Iceland have heard of it. It has a waterfall that comes out of a lava field, a hot spring that heats two towns, a bathhouse built on that spring, a medieval writer’s farm and a glacier at the end of the road. On a July afternoon the car park at Hraunfossar has thirty cars in it. Gullfoss has thirty coaches.
What’s on the loop
Hraunfossar: almost a kilometre of springs pouring out from under the edge of the Hallmundarhraun lava into the Hvítá, with Barnafoss, a narrow rapid, a hundred metres upstream. Ten minutes from the car park on flat paths.
Deildartunguhver: a hot spring in a field near Reykholt that pipes hot water to Borgarnes and Akranes. It boils, steams and smells, and you stand behind a rail. Krauma is the bathhouse beside it — several pools of that water cooled with glacier melt, saunas, a cold tub, a restaurant. Quiet in feel, small in size, open all year. Book ahead in summer.
Reykholt: where Snorri Sturluson wrote and was killed in 1241. A church, a small museum, his stone-lined bath.
Húsafell: the farm and resort at the end of the tarmac, with a hotel, a pool and the Canyon Baths — two small pools in a gorge a short drive and walk from the hotel, visited only with a guide. Beyond it, Langjökull.
By tour from Reykjavík
Two ten-hour days from Arctic Adventures. Silver Circle & Húsafell Canyon Baths, €199, does the loop and ends in the Canyon Baths rather than Krauma. Silver Circle & Viðgelmir Lava Cave, €185, swaps the bath for a guided walk into Viðgelmir, a lava tube in the same lava field with a boardwalk and lighting. Neither goes to Krauma. If Krauma specifically is the point, you need a car; it’s a 20-minute detour off the same road.
If you’re staying at Húsafell, add Into The Glacier - From Húsafell, €198, four hours, and you’ve got the glacier as well. Read our Into the Glacier guide for the departure options.
Downside of both tours: ten hours for a loop that starts an hour and a half from town means a slow, stop-heavy day. Fine if that’s what you want. It’s not the day for people who like to keep moving.
Versus the Golden Circle
The Golden Circle has Þingvellir and Geysir, and nothing on the Silver Circle replaces either. If it’s your first trip and you have one day, do the Golden Circle; the crowds are the price of seeing the two things everyone will ask you about. The Silver Circle is the second day, or the first day of a second trip. Or the day you pick when the Golden Circle forecast is wall-to-wall rain and you want a hot pool at the end regardless.
Our honest take
Rent a car, drive the loop yourself, and finish at Krauma. The €199 tour buys you the Canyon Baths instead, which are smaller and quieter but not what most people came for. If you’re carless, book Silver Circle & Húsafell Canyon Baths and accept that Krauma isn’t on it. Either way, go in the afternoon; the light on Hraunfossar comes from the west. The tradeoff is that you’re spending a day on the quieter, smaller version of a thing whose loud, famous version is an hour away. We’d take quiet.
