Vík í Mýrdal: worth staying the night?
A village of 750 people with the best-placed hotel beds on the South Coast. What Vík is actually for, what to book from it, and the beach that kills people.
The short version
- Vík is 187 km from Reykjavík, about two and a half hours. Most day tours turn round here.
- Stay the night if you want the ice cave, the glacier or the beach without a bus timetable.
- Reynisfjara's waves have killed visitors. The danger is real and the signs are not decoration.
- The Katla ice cave leaves from Vík and runs all year, unlike the winter-only crystal caves.
Stay the night if you are going anywhere east of here, or if you want to do something in the morning that is not sitting on a coach. Skip it if the South Coast is a single day trip from Reykjavík — you will see the same beach either way, just with forty minutes there instead of an evening.
Vík is 750 people, one petrol station, a church on a hill and a black beach. It is also the last real settlement for 70 kilometres in either direction, which is why every hotel bed in it is booked by August.
What the village actually is
A bend in Route 1 at the foot of Reynisfjall, 187 kilometres from Reykjavík. Two and a half hours in summer, longer in winter when the wind comes off the sea. Víkurkirkja stands on the slope above the houses, and the standing local joke is that it is the one building that would survive a Katla eruption, since everything below sits on the flood path.
The village has a supermarket, three or four places to eat, a wool shop and a petrol station that every tour bus in the country stops at. That is the whole of it. People who arrive expecting a town are disappointed; people who arrive expecting a base are not.
Reynisfjara, and being honest about it
The black beach is two minutes west by car. It is the reason most people come, and it is the most dangerous stretch of coast in Iceland that anybody walks on freely.
The waves do not arrive at a steady size. Every so often one runs far higher up the sand than the ones before it, and the slope is steep enough that the backwash takes your legs. People have died there, including people who were standing where they thought was safe. The rule that works: stay above the highest wet line on the sand, keep your back to nothing, and never turn round to pose for a photograph. We have written about the sneaker waves at more length.
Dyrhólaey, the arch on the headland west of the beach, is the quieter stop and has better views back along the coast. Parts of it close during the nesting season in early summer.
What to book from Vík
This is where staying pays. The tours that meet in the village start at eight or nine in the morning, which from Reykjavík would mean leaving at five.
The Katla ice cave is the best of them, and it runs all year — unlike the crystal caves at Jökulsárlón, which are a winter product. A super jeep takes you across the black outwash plain to the edge of Kötlujökull and you walk in on crampons. The ice is banded with volcanic ash, black and grey through the blue. Arctic Adventures’ Katla Ice Cave & Super Jeep from Vík is three hours from €217. Southcoast Adventure’s three-hour Katla cave tour meeting in Vík is €215 for the same idea.
For a glacier underfoot rather than overhead, Gravel Travel’s Sólheimajökull hike meeting at the glacier is from €101 for three hours, half an hour west of the village. Meeting at the car park rather than being collected in Reykjavík is what makes it that price.
Vík Horse Adventure ride out onto the black sand from a farm just outside the village: the Black Beach Riding Tour is an hour from €109, and the shorter family beach ride is thirty minutes from €80 with small children in mind. Icelandic horses are small, calm and do not spook at the surf.
On a wet evening, the Lava Show at €48 pours molten rock into a room fifty minutes at a time. It sounds like a gimmick and is genuinely good — you feel the heat from four metres away.
The catch
There are not many beds and they are not cheap. In July the village is fully booked months out, and the overflow ends up in Hvolsvöllur an hour back west, which defeats the point. Book early or do not plan on it.
The other catch is weather. Vík sits where the southerly wind hits land first and it gets more rain than anywhere else in the country. A storm closes the road east over Mýrdalssandur with no warning and no alternative route.
Our honest take
One day on the South Coast: do not stay, take the coach, accept the forty minutes.
Two days or more, or anything heading east to Jökulsárlón: stay in Vík and book the Katla cave for the morning after. You get a cave, a glacier and a beach in fourteen hours from one small village, and you drive east afterwards rested rather than starting at dawn from the city.
And keep back from the water. We would rather lose the booking than write that sentence again.
