Seljalandsfoss is about two hours east of Reykjavik on Iceland's south coast, a hundred metres off the ring road beneath the Eyjafjallajokull icecap. The first photograph is it in summer: a single ribbon of water falling sixty metres off a cliff that was a sea cliff until the coastline moved south, into a shallow pool surrounded by moss.
AND THE REASON PEOPLE COME IS A THING NO PHOTOGRAPH WE HOLD CAN SHOW: YOU CAN WALK ALL THE WAY ROUND BEHIND IT. The cliff is undercut, so a narrow path runs into the recess behind the falling water, round the back, and out the other side. From in there you are looking out through the curtain. There are very few waterfalls in the world where that is possible and fewer still where it is a five-minute walk from a car park. IT IS ABSENT FROM ALL THIRTY-FOUR FRAMES WE HOLD. The third photograph, a wooden staircase, is the closest anything in our set comes to showing the path, and the reason is simple and worth stating: inside the recess you are in continuous heavy spray, so almost nobody takes a camera in there and the photographs that exist of this waterfall are all of it from the outside.
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What Is Here
THE WALK BEHIND IS SHORT, STEEP, SLIPPERY AND GENUINELY SOAKING. Count on ten minutes and on being wet to the skin from the waist up. The path is rock and mud with steps cut into it, there are chains and handrails in the worst places, and the spray makes every surface greasy. People fall here regularly. The sensible order is to go round in the direction the signs indicate, keep both hands free, and put the phone away until you are out.
GLJUFRABUI IS SIX HUNDRED METRES NORTH AND MOST VISITORS MISS IT. This is the better secret of the two. A separate waterfall falls inside a narrow cleft in the same cliff, almost entirely hidden, and you reach it by WADING UP THE STREAM INTO THE SLOT, which is ankle to shin deep, over round stones, between walls a few metres apart. Inside there is a chamber open to the sky with the fall coming down into it. It is one of the best fifteen minutes on the south coast and it requires getting your feet wet. There is also a ledge path round the outside if the water is high.
WINTER IS THE SECOND PHOTOGRAPH AND IT CHANGES THE SITE COMPLETELY. The spray freezes on everything: the path behind the falls becomes an ice tunnel, the steps become a slide, and the whole recess is often roped off or simply impassable. The waterfall itself is spectacular, with ice formations building out from the rock and rainbows in the low sun. The honest position is that in winter this is a viewpoint rather than a walk, and trying the back path in ice without spikes is how people get hurt here.
AND IT IS THE FIRST STOP ON THE SOUTH COAST RUN, WHICH IS WHY IT IS BUSY. SKOGAFOSS is twenty-five minutes further east, the DC-3 wreck at Solheimasandur and REYNISFJARA beyond that, and VIK is an hour away. The car park charges and the facilities are a pay lavatory and a seasonal food van.
When to Go
June to September for the walk, and early or late in the day for the quiet. The path behind is open and relatively safe, the moss is green, and in midsummer you can be there at ten at night in full light with almost nobody else present. Coaches arrive between ten and four.
SEPTEMBER IS THE BEST COMPROMISE, with the path still open, the crowds thinning and the northern lights starting. The angle of the sun in late summer puts a rainbow in the spray in the afternoon.
WINTER IS FOR LOOKING, NOT WALKING. Expect ice, expect the back path to be closed or lethal, and expect the car park to be the windiest hundred metres of your day. The ring road here is maintained and usually open; what closes is visibility.
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
Two hours from Reykjavik on Route 1 and you cannot miss it. The falls are visible from the ring road and signposted; turn north onto Route 249. THE CAR PARK IS PAID and the charge is collected by the landowners, by machine or app, so bring a card. There is no bus, but every south coast tour from Reykjavik stops here and most combine it with Skogafoss and Reynisfjara.
ROUTE 249 CONTINUES WEST TO THORSMORK AND THAT IS NOT A DRIVE FOR A HIRE CAR. Beyond the falls the road becomes an F-road with unbridged river crossings, which standard hire insurance excludes entirely. Thorsmork is a bus or a super-jeep, not a self-drive.
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 Seljalandsfoss Packing List
You are going to be soaked from the waist up, standing in wind afterwards, wading a stream next door, and driving for hours either side. This is the one packing list in the Icelandic set where waterproofing is not a precaution but the entire design.
Our merino base layers are 100% Australian merino at 17.5 micron, and a long sleeve merino wool base layer for women is the thing that makes this site bearable rather than miserable. The point is specific: you will get wet through whatever shell you wear, and wool next to the skin stays warm when damp and dries on you in the car, where a cotton top goes cold and stays cold for the rest of the day. Anyone who has walked behind this waterfall in a cotton t-shirt remembers it for the wrong reason.
A Marmot PreCip Eco rain jacket with a hood that cinches, because the spray behind the falls arrives from below and sideways as well as above.
Waterproof hiking trousers, which matter more here than anywhere else in Iceland: the recess soaks you from the knee down and the Gljufrabui stream is ankle to shin deep.
Merrell Moab 3 waterproof hiking boots for the wet rock and the wade. Trainers will be full of water within a minute at Gljufrabui.
Kahtoola MICROspikes between November and April. Without them the back path and the steps are ice, and with them you still may not get round, because the recess is frequently closed.
A quick-dry travel towel, which is the single most useful small item in this list: you will want to dry a face, a camera and a pair of hands before getting back in the car.
Not linked and worth packing: A WATERPROOF PHONE CASE or a dry bag for the camera, which the registry does carry as a waterproof dry bag if you want the larger version; a SPARE PAIR OF SOCKS, because the Gljufrabui wade defeats most boots eventually; and SUNGLASSES for the glare, with no eyewear entry in this registry to point at.
Recommended Tours and Experiences
Essential Resources for Women at Seljalandsfoss
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.
THE PATH BEHIND THE FALLS IS THE HAZARD AND IT IS NOT A DRAMATIC ONE: PEOPLE SLIP. The surfaces are wet rock and mud on a slope, the spray keeps them greasy all year, and the drop in places is a few metres onto stone rather than off a cliff, which is quite enough for a broken wrist or ankle. Keep both hands free, use the chains, go slowly, and accept that in ice the back route is simply not available. At Gljufrabui the footing is round river stones under moving water, which is the other classic ankle. Neither of these is a reason not to go. Both are reasons to wear the right boots and to put the phone in a pocket.
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 health centre is at HVOLSVOLLUR, about twenty minutes east, with another at HELLA to the west; both handle the sprains and fractures this site produces. The nearest hospital with a full emergency department is LANDSPITALI in Reykjavik, two hours away, and the regional hospital at SELFOSS is about an hour. There is no first aid at the falls. A pharmacy in Hvolsvollur covers minor needs. Bring a UK GHIC or EU EHIC for state care on resident terms and insurance on top for repatriation, because the distances here are the real cost.
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 South Iceland regional board publishes the car park charging arrangements and whether the path behind the falls is open, which changes with ice and water level
Takeaways
You can walk all the way round behind it, and that is why it is famous. It is in none of our photographs, because nobody takes a camera into the spray.
You will be soaked to the skin from the waist up. Plan the layers around that rather than around the air temperature.
Gljufrabui, six hundred metres north, is the better of the two and you reach it by wading up a stream into a cleft.
In winter the back path is ice and is often closed. It becomes a viewpoint, not a walk.
The car park is paid and privately collected. Bring a card.
Solo women safety assessment: Seljalandsfoss is one of the busiest sites in Iceland and you will rarely be alone at it, which makes it an easy solo stop. THERE ARE NO ADVISED-AGAINST AREAS ANYWHERE IN ICELAND and the FCDO's terrorism language for the country is unusually mild, so crime is not the planning problem. THE PLANNING PROBLEM IS SLIPPING. Wet rock, mud and spray behind the falls, and round stones underwater at Gljufrabui, are what put visitors in the health centre at Hvolsvollur, and a solo traveller has nobody to catch her, so the honest adjustments are proper boots, both hands free, and skipping the back path entirely in ice. The second is the drive: two hours each way on a coast where weather turns fast and where it is dark for much of the year, so lodge a travel plan with SafeTravel Iceland and download the 112 app. Eating alone anywhere on this coast draws no attention at all. 112 reaches police, ambulance and rescue.
Reading On
Seljalandsfoss is the first stop on a coast this library covers end to end. Twenty-five minutes east, the Skogafoss packing list covers the waterfall with the staircase and the start of the Fimmvorduhals trail. Beyond that the Reynisfjara packing list covers the black sand beach and its sneaker waves, and the Vik packing list the village most people sleep in. Further east the Skaftafell packing list covers the walking in Vatnajokull and the Jokulsarlon packing list the glacier lagoon. Inland, the Landmannalaugar packing list covers the highland hot springs this road eventually reaches. Two hours west, the Reykjavik packing list covers the city, and the Gullfoss packing list the Golden Circle inland. For the country as a whole, the Iceland packing list and the Iceland travel guide for women carry the ring road, the seasons and the costs in full. For why wool is the only sensible base layer when you are going to be wet through on purpose, 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. Inland on the same loop, the Kerid packing list covers the collapsed volcanic crater with a green lake in it, which is the one Golden Circle stop that charges admission.
If the outer journey is calling you, the inner one usually is too. Explore SoulMap at romantrail.com/blogs/soulmap.
