Hraunfossar is about a hundred kilometres north east of Reykjavik, at the top of the Borgarfjordur valley near Husafell, and it is the only waterfall in this library that is not really a waterfall. The first photograph is it in winter. What you are looking at is not a river going over an edge. It is GROUNDWATER COMING OUT OF THE SIDE OF A LAVA FIELD, in dozens of separate rivulets, along about a kilometre of low cliff, straight into the turquoise Hvita.
AND THE REASON IS WORTH UNDERSTANDING, BECAUSE IT IS THE WHOLE POINT OF THE PLACE. The HALLMUNDARHRAUN lava field behind the cliff was laid down by an eruption under the Langjokull icecap, probably around the tenth century. Lava of that kind is porous, full of tubes and cracks, and the rock beneath it is not, so meltwater and rain sink into the lava, travel underground for kilometres, and emerge at the line where the lava ends. HRAUNFOSSAR MEANS LAVA FALLS, and the name is a description rather than a flourish. The flow barely changes with the weather, because the lava is a reservoir rather than a channel, which is why the second and third photographs can be autumn and high summer and show much the same volume.
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What Is Here
THE SITE IS A CAR PARK, A WOODEN BOARDWALK AND TWO VIEWING PLATFORMS, AND IT TAKES TWENTY MINUTES. That is the honest scale of it. There is a short path along the top of the cliff with railings, a platform over the falls, and a second platform two hundred metres upstream at Barnafoss. There is a cafe and lavatories in season. You do not walk down to the water and you should not try: the cliff edge is unfenced in places beyond the boardwalk and the rock is loose.
BARNAFOSS IS THE OTHER HALF OF THE VISIT AND IT IS THE DANGEROUS ONE. Two hundred metres upstream the whole Hvita squeezes through a narrow slot in the lava and comes out as a violent blue-white chute. It is a completely different thing from Hraunfossar: concentrated, loud and fast where the lava falls are diffuse and quiet. THE NAME MEANS CHILDREN'S FALLS, from a story that two children fell from a natural stone arch here and that their mother had the arch destroyed afterwards. The arch is gone. People have died in this water. IT IS ABSENT FROM EVERY PHOTOGRAPH WE HOLD, which is worth saying plainly, because the three images in this post are all the gentle half of the site and the chute above it is the half that requires care.
HUSAFELL IS THE BASE AND IT IS WHY YOU WOULD STAY RATHER THAN STOP. Ten minutes away there is a hotel, a geothermal pool complex, a campsite and the start of the tracks into the interior. The LANGJOKULL ice cave tours and the VIDGELMIR lava cave both run from near here, and Vidgelmir is the relevant one for this post: it is one of the largest lava tubes in the world and it is part of the same Hallmundarhraun eruption that makes the falls work, so the cave and the falls are two views of one piece of geology.
DEILDARTUNGUHVER IS FORTY MINUTES BACK DOWN THE VALLEY and is the highest-flowing hot spring in Europe at around 180 litres a second at 97 degrees, feeding the Krauma baths and a pipeline that heats towns fifty kilometres away. With REYKHOLT and its Snorri Sturluson museum, that makes a full day out of a twenty-minute waterfall.
When to Go
June to September is the straightforward answer and late September is the best one. The road is clear, the cafe is open, the birch scrub around the falls turns red and gold, and the light is low enough to show the rivulets rather than flatten them. The second photograph is that.
WINTER IS SPECTACULAR AND THE BOARDWALK IS THE PROBLEM. The falls partly freeze into blue curtains and the lava field goes white, which is the first photograph. What nobody tells you is that the wooden walkway and the platforms become a sheet of ice, with spray freezing on them all day, and that the handrails are the only thing between you and a bad fall. THIS IS A MICROSPIKES SITE IN WINTER, not a grippy-boots site. The road up the valley is maintained and is usually passable, but it is the last section, beyond Reykholt, that closes in weather.
AND CHECK THE ROAD RATHER THAN THE FORECAST. Iceland's road administration publishes conditions section by section and updates them through the day, which is a different and more useful question than whether it will snow.
The FCDO publishes no advised-against areas anywhere in Iceland and the country has no /regional-risks page, so there is no partial advisory behind the summary. On terrorism it is unusually mild by its own standards, saying that ALTHOUGH THERE IS NO RECENT HISTORY OF TERRORISM IN ICELAND, ATTACKS CANNOT BE RULED OUT. On crime it says levels are LOW, with petty theft and antisocial behaviour PARTICULARLY AROUND BARS IN DOWNTOWN REYKJAVIK, which is the only location it names in the whole country. What the landing page does carry is a named VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS warning, and the detail there matters more than the headline: the eruptions since December 2023 have affected THE TOWN OF GRINDAVIK AND THE SURROUNDING AREA, and the FCDO states plainly that THE CAPITAL CITY, REYKJAVIK, KEFLAVIK INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT AND THE REST OF ICELAND HAVE NOT BEEN AFFECTED. So this is a named-town situation rather than a country-level one, which is the opposite of how a reader skimming headlines would take it.
Getting There
It is about ninety minutes from Reykjavik in summer and you need a car. Route 1 north to Borgarnes, then Route 50 and Route 518 up the valley past Reykholt to Husafell. There is no scheduled bus to the falls. Coach tours run from Reykjavik and usually combine Hraunfossar with Deildartunguhver and a lava cave, which is the sensible way to do it without driving.
THE LAST STRETCH IS THE ONE TO THINK ABOUT. Route 518 is paved to Husafell but narrow, and beyond Husafell the tracks into the interior are F-roads, which a standard hire car is not insured to drive and which open only in summer. If your plan involves Langjokull, that is a tour rather than a drive.
AND THE WIND IS A HIRE CAR PROBLEM BEFORE IT IS A DRIVING PROBLEM. Open your door into a gust in this valley and it can be taken out of your hand, which is the commonest damage claim in Iceland and the one insurance usually excludes.
Icelandic driving rules differ from British ones in ways that carry fines of up to about five hundred pounds, and the FCDO lists them. KEEP DIPPED HEADLIGHTS ON YEAR ROUND, day and night, which is a legal requirement. Speed limits are lower than in the UK and the DRINK DRIVING LIMIT IS LOWER TOO. Suitable tyres are required, including winter tyres when conditions call for them. A UK photocard licence is valid for thirty days. Beyond the rules, the conditions are the thing: the weather changes fast, distances between towns are far greater than the map suggests, SOME MAIN ROUTES ARE GRAVEL OR DIRT, and some roads and bridges are SINGLE LANE WITH PASSING AREAS. Highland and interior F-roads need four wheel drive, open only for a short part of the summer, and where they cross rivers the instruction is to DRIVE AT FIVE TO TEN KILOMETRES AN HOUR and to understand that RIVER LEVELS CAN CHANGE WITHIN THE SAME DAY. Check the Icelandic Road Administration before every driving day rather than once at the start of the trip.
If you hire a car in Iceland there is one clause worth knowing before you sign, and the FCDO states it rather than hinting at it: THE WEATHER CAN CAUSE DAMAGE TO RENTAL CARS THAT IS NOT COVERED BY INSURANCE. Strong winds are common and throw up sand and ash that strips paintwork, and in its own words BRITISH TOURISTS HAVE HAD TO PAY LARGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY to repair hire cars damaged that way. Sand and ash protection is sold as a separate product by most Icelandic hire companies and is the one add-on that is usually worth taking. Two related points: BREAKDOWN RECOVERY COSTS IN REMOTE AREAS CAN BE VERY HIGH, and OFF-ROAD DRIVING IS STRICTLY CONTROLLED and illegal outside marked tracks, with large fines, because the vegetation does not recover.
The Hraunfossar Packing List
A wet, windy, exposed twenty minutes with constant spray, an icy boardwalk for half the year, and a long drive either side of it.
Our merino base layers are 100% Australian merino at 17.5 micron, and a long sleeve merino wool base layer for women is the right next-to-skin layer here for a reason specific to Iceland: you spend the day getting in and out of a warm car into horizontal spray, and wool holds its warmth when damp where cotton goes cold the moment the wind finds it. It is also the layer that survives a week of this without smelling, which matters when the trip is a ring-road drive and laundry is a hostel sink.
A Marmot PreCip Eco rain jacket, because the spray at the platform is horizontal and a shower-resistant softshell is not enough. Icelandic rain arrives sideways and a hood that cinches is the difference between twenty comfortable minutes and a cold afternoon.
Waterproof hiking trousers for the same reason, and because the boardwalk collects standing water that soaks you from the knee down.
Kahtoola MICROspikes if you are here between November and April. This is the single most useful thing in this list in winter: the platforms ice over from the spray and the railings are the only handhold.
Merrell Moab 3 waterproof hiking boots, which handle the wet boardwalk, the lava gravel at Barnafoss and the cave tours if you add one.
A merino beanie, because the wind here comes down off Langjokull and the valley funnels it.
Not linked and worth packing: SUNGLASSES for the glare off snow and water, which this registry carries no eyewear entry for at all; A SMALL TOWEL, because spray gets on a camera lens within seconds; and a WATERPROOF PHONE CASE, since the platform is the one place you will want to take a photograph and the one place everything gets wet.
Recommended Tours and Experiences
Essential Resources for Women at Hraunfossar
Emergency numbers: 112 reaches police, ambulance, fire and mountain and sea rescue from any phone including a locked mobile, and English is spoken. Download the 112 Iceland app before you travel: it sends your GPS position to the emergency services with one button and logs your location periodically so you can be found, which is the single most useful free thing a visitor to Iceland can do. For non-urgent medical advice the health service line is 1700.
BARNAFOSS IS THE HAZARD AND IT IS TWO HUNDRED METRES FROM THE SAFE ONE. The lava falls are gentle, diffuse and viewed from a railed platform. The chute upstream is a confined torrent through a slot in the rock, the lava edges around it are undercut and loose, and the drop is short and unsurvivable. Stay on the boardwalk and behind the railings, do not climb out onto the lava for a photograph, and keep hold of children. In winter assume every wooden surface is ice.
One sentence on Iceland's safety page deserves to be read twice, because it names the three things that actually hurt visitors and all three are things people come here to look at: GOING TOO CLOSE TO THE OCEAN, CLIFF EDGES AND HOT SPRINGS ARE COMMON CAUSES OF ACCIDENTS IN ICELAND. That is not a generic caution. The ocean here produces sneaker waves, which run far higher up a beach than the sets before them with no visible warning and which have killed people standing on black sand looking out to sea. Cliff edges in Iceland are frequently unfenced, often undercut, and made of material that gives way. Hot springs and mud pots are at or near boiling, the ground around them can be a thin crust over water at that temperature, and the burns are severe. The rule in all three cases is the same and it is unglamorous: keep back further than feels necessary, never turn your back on the sea, and stay on the boardwalks and marked paths in a geothermal area.
Iceland runs a national system for exactly the situation a visitor gets into and the FCDO points at it by name. SAFETRAVEL ICELAND publishes route conditions and hazard guides and LETS YOU LODGE A TRAVEL PLAN, so that if you do not return someone knows where to look, and the FCDO's own instruction is to leave your plans and contact details either with your hotel or on Safe Travel. Alongside it, the Icelandic Met Office carries weather and aurora and seismic alerts, the Road Administration carries road status, and 112 is both the emergency number and an app that transmits your position to the rescue services. None of that costs anything, and in a country where SEARCH AND RESCUE MAY BE LIMITED IN SOME AREAS, which the FCDO says plainly because Iceland is inside the Arctic Circle, using it is the difference between an incident and a statistic.
A UK Global Health Insurance Card or an EU European Health Insurance Card gives you state-provided medically necessary care in Iceland on the same terms as a resident, which is not the same as free: Iceland charges patient co-payments for primary care and outpatient visits, so expect to pay something and keep the receipts. Travel insurance still matters and matters more here than in most of Europe, because the FCDO notes that EMERGENCY MEDICAL ASSISTANCE AND SEARCH AND RESCUE MAY BE LIMITED IN SOME AREAS and because an evacuation from a remote part of the country is expensive. Tap water is among the best in the world and buying bottled is pointless; the hot tap smells of sulphur because it is geothermal, which is harmless. Pharmacies are apotek.
US State Department travel advisory: the Iceland advisory. Read the current level there directly rather than relying on a figure printed in any guide.
UK FCDO travel advice: gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/iceland, and read the safety and security page rather than only the landing page, because that is where the substance sits.
Main hospital or clinic: the nearest medical help is the health centre at BORGARNES, about an hour back down the valley, and the nearest hospital with a full emergency department is LANDSPITALI in Reykjavik, roughly ninety minutes away. That distance is the point rather than a detail: there is no clinic at the falls, no pharmacy at Husafell, and an ambulance is a long call. Carry any regular medication with you rather than in the hotel, bring a UK GHIC or EU EHIC for state care on resident terms, and hold insurance that covers repatriation, because Iceland's co-payments and its evacuation distances are both real.
Official health authority: the Directorate of Health of Iceland, is the Directorate of Health
US Embassy: the United States Embassy in Reykjavik.
Official tourism authority: the Icelandic Tourist Board, covers the country, and the West Iceland regional board publishes the Husafell and Reykholt opening hours, which contract sharply out of season
And the authority that decides whether you get here at all is the road administration. VEGAGERDIN publishes Icelandic road conditions section by section, in English, updated through the day, and Route 518 up this valley is one of the sections that closes in weather while the ring road stays open. Check road.is on the morning you drive rather than the night before.
Takeaways
It is not a waterfall. It is a kilometre of springs coming out of the side of a lava field.
The flow barely changes with the weather, because the lava is a reservoir and not a channel.
Barnafoss, two hundred metres upstream, is the dangerous half of the site and is in none of our photographs.
Twenty minutes at the falls, ninety minutes of driving each way, and a full day if you add Deildartunguhver and a lava cave.
In winter the boardwalk is a sheet of ice. Bring microspikes rather than optimism.
Solo women safety assessment: Iceland is among the easiest countries in the world to travel alone and this is among its easier sites. THERE ARE NO ADVISED-AGAINST AREAS ANYWHERE IN ICELAND, the FCDO's terrorism language is unusually mild by its own standards, and crime against visitors is low enough that it is not the thing to plan around. WHAT IS THE THING TO PLAN AROUND IS THE DRIVE AND THE WATER. You will be on a rural road for ninety minutes each way, possibly in the dark for much of the year, with weather that changes inside an hour and mobile coverage that is good on the route and patchy off it, so lodge a travel plan with SafeTravel Iceland, download the 112 app, and tell someone where you are going. At the site itself the entire risk is the edge: stay on the boardwalk, treat Barnafoss as the hazard it is, and in winter assume the wood is ice. Eating alone at Husafell draws no attention and the geothermal pool is a normal, mixed, unremarkable place to spend an evening. 112 for everything, including mountain and sea rescue.
Reading On
Hraunfossar sits at the top of a valley this library covers from several directions. The Reykjavik packing list covers the city most visitors drive from, ninety minutes south. On the standard loop east of the capital, the Gullfoss packing list covers the Golden Circle's big waterfall, which is everything Hraunfossar is not, and the Thingvellir packing list the rift valley and the old parliament site. West of here the Snaefellsnes packing list covers the peninsula with its own lava fields and Kirkjufell. For the other end of the country, the Myvatn packing list covers the northern volcanic lake and the Dettifoss packing list the most powerful waterfall in Europe. For the country as a whole, the Iceland packing list and the Iceland travel guide for women carry the ring road, the seasons, the costs and the road rules in full. For why wool beats cotton when you are wet and windblown all day, read the guide to merino wool base layers for women. Every destination we cover is indexed at the travel packing guide for women, and the base layers are at the Roman Trail collection.
If the outer journey is calling you, the inner one usually is too. Explore SoulMap at romantrail.com/blogs/soulmap.
