Waterfalls Near Vik and the Legends Carved into Iceland's Coast

Walk Behind Seljalandsfoss Waterfall

Seljalandsfoss cascades 60 metres down a sheer cliff face, and what makes it unique among Iceland's waterfalls is the path that runs behind the curtain of falling water. As you approach on the tour, the spray intensifies and the roar grows louder, but you can step into the alcove carved by millennia of water erosion. The experience is visceral: you are surrounded by the sound and mist of the fall, looking outward through the water veil to the landscape beyond. This walk-behind section takes only minutes but delivers a sensation most travellers remember long after the tour ends.

The waterfall sits on the southern coast's volcanic plains, fed by snowmelt and underground springs. On a 14-hour tour covering multiple stops, Seljalandsfoss is one of the most photographed moments, so arrive early in the viewing area to find your angle. The water is cold and the rocks are slippery, so sturdy footwear matters. Many visitors bring a waterproof layer or accept that they will get damp. The waterfall flows year-round, though winter visits mean shorter daylight hours to capture the scene.

Hvolsvöllur and the Njal's Saga Connection

Hvolsvöllur is the first substantial stop as the coach leaves Reykjavik southbound. This small settlement sits at the heart of one of Iceland's greatest medieval narratives, Njal's Saga, a tale of honour, betrayal and bloody feuds that unfolded across this region in the 10th century. The saga names real families and real places, anchoring its drama to the landscape you see today. Hvolsvöllur itself is mentioned as a farm where key characters lived and where critical events in the saga took place. Understanding this layer of history transforms the plain fields and distant mountains into a stage where legendary rivalries played out.

The saga tradition is more than storytelling; it is Iceland's written record of its settlement era and the values that shaped the nation. Njal's Saga specifically chronicles the lives of Njal Thorgeirsson and Gunnar of Hlidarendi, warriors and farmers whose deeds, honour codes and final conflicts echo through Icelandic culture. Walking or passing through Hvolsvöllur on this tour connects you to a narrative thread that has survived over a thousand years. Many Icelanders can trace their ancestry to families named in these sagas, making the connection between ancient story and living community tangible and real.

Reynisdrangar: the sea stacks that legend says were once trolls.

Katla and Eyjafjallajökull: Volcanoes That Reshaped the Coast

Two major volcanoes dominate the southern coast's geology and history: Katla, which sits beneath the Myrdalsjökull ice cap, and Eyjafjallajökull, which erupted in 2010 and caused global aviation disruption. Both mountains are visible on clear days during the tour, but their real impact lies in what they have done to the landscape and to the people who live in its shadow. Katla has a known eruption cycle, with major explosions roughly every 40 to 80 years; the last confirmed eruption was in 1918, making it statistically overdue. Eyjafjallajökull's 2010 eruption ejected ash high into the atmosphere, closing European airspace for six days and reminding the world that Iceland remains geologically active and unpredictable.

Farmers on this coast have lived with volcanic risk for centuries, adapting their settlements and practices to the hazards. The eruptions reshape river courses, bury land under lava and ash, and occasionally trigger jökulhlaup, the catastrophic floods that occur when subglacial eruptions melt ice. The land you travel through on this tour is a palimpsest of volcanic activity: you stand on lava fields from eruptions centuries ago, while the mountains that created them loom above, potentially dangerous but also utterly captivating. This interplay between beauty and geological hazard is central to understanding Iceland's southern coast.

Kirkjubæjarklaustur and the Legend of the Nun

Kirkjubæjarklaustur's unusual name translates as 'Church Farm Convent' and carries within it a story of faith, defiance and local legend. The settlement marks the site of an old convent where, according to tradition, a nun once stood alone against an eruption. When lava approached the settlement in 1783 during the catastrophic Laki eruption, the nun is said to have walked toward the advancing lava and prayed it would stop. Whether fact or embellished folklore, the story reflects the region's deep connection between spiritual belief and survival in a landscape of active geological forces. The name itself preserves that religious history in a way few place names do.

Today Kirkjubæjarklaustur is a small village that serves as a stopping point on the route toward Jökulsárlón. The legend endures in local memory and in the curious minds of visitors passing through on tours like this one. It speaks to the Icelandic tradition of tying human agency and will to the forces of nature, turning historical trauma into narrative that explains and contextualizes survival. The village sits on productive land created by volcanic activity, and the contrast between the beauty of the landscape and the danger it represents is especially acute here.

The Hidden People and Beliefs Along the Route

As the coach travels the southern coast, you pass through countryside where belief in hidden people, or 'huldufólk', remains embedded in Icelandic culture. These are not ghosts or demons in the Christian sense, but rather another population occupying the same space as humans, invisible to most but present nonetheless. Stories of hidden people abducting children, causing illness, or protecting certain rocks and caves persist even in modern Iceland, and many Icelanders, whether or not they literally believe, acknowledge the cultural weight these narratives carry. Construction projects have been delayed or rerouted to avoid disturbing sites believed to be sacred to hidden people, a pragmatic nod to folklore even in a technological age.

The southern coast's dramatic and often harsh landscape seems to invite such beliefs. The mist, the sudden weather changes, the isolation of remote farms, and the genuine dangers of travelling across lava fields and glacial terrain all created conditions in which invisible presences seemed plausible to past generations. While modern tour guides may present these beliefs with a wink, they reflect something real: the Icelandic sense that nature is powerful, unknowable, and deserving of respect. The hidden people, in this sense, are metaphors for the forces beyond human control that shape life on this coast.

Farming Life Beside Advancing Glaciers

The southern coast of Iceland has always been marginal farmland, where families worked soil and raised sheep in the shadow of glaciers and volcanoes. Before modern technology, glacier advance could mean the loss of pasture, the disruption of water systems, and the abandonment of homesteads that had been in families for generations. The Skaftafell region, which you approach as you move toward Jökulsárlón, has experienced dramatic glacial retreat in recent decades, revealing land that glaciers had buried for centuries. In contrast, historical periods saw glaciers advance across productive farmland, forcing relocations and causing economic hardship. These cycles of advance and retreat are part of the lived history of this region.

Farming in this environment required deep knowledge of the land, attention to weather patterns, and extraordinary resilience. Farmers built shelters in low valleys to protect animals from wind, managed grazing rotation carefully, and developed practices suited to short growing seasons and uncertain climate. The settlements you see on this tour are descendants of that tradition, and many farms are still active. Understanding that these were not isolated curiosities but working landscapes, managed by people solving real problems of survival and livelihood, adds depth to the journey. The landscape you admire is the product of human labour across centuries, adapted to conditions that remain challenging even today.

Vik i Myrdal and the Black Beach Mystery

Vik i Myrdal sits at the southernmost point of Iceland's mainland, perched above a black sand beach famous for its stark beauty and historical danger. The black sand is volcanic in origin, the product of lava flows and eruptions that over millennia broke down into fine particles. The beach has long held a fearsome reputation among mariners and locals because of the strength of its waves and currents; the sea here is unpredictable and powerful, and shipwrecks have been recorded along this coast. Vik means 'bay' in Icelandic, a straightforward name that speaks to geography rather than legend, yet the settlement has accumulated stories and warnings over its history.

The little red church that sits above Vik, Vik i Myrdal Church, is a striking landmark visible from great distances across the black sand plain. Built in the 1980s, the modern church replaced earlier structures on the site, continuing a tradition of religious community presence at this remote location. The church's bright red walls contrast dramatically with the black sand and grey-green moss, making it a visual anchor for both locals and tour visitors. From this vantage point, you can see the Reynisdrangar sea stacks rising from the water to the west, completing a landscape that feels both beautiful and severe, shaped by geological time and human persistence.

Reynisdrangar and the Troll Legend

Off the coast near Vik rise the Reynisdrangar sea stacks, three towering columns of dark rock that thrust from the Atlantic. The largest extends roughly 66 metres above sea level, dominating the view from Reynisfjara Beach. Local legend holds that these columns are actually trolls, turned to stone by the sun's rays as they attempted to drag a ship ashore. The story is typical of Icelandic folklore, which frequently uses petrification as a punishment or explanation for rock formations, and it reflects a pattern in Norse mythology where supernatural beings are vulnerable to light. Whether told as literal belief or entertaining narrative, the troll story gives the sea stacks a name and a character that simple geology cannot.

The Reynisdrangar stand in a dramatic seascape where waves crash powerfully and the basalt cliffs create a sense of ancient, unchanging geology. The stacks themselves are nesting sites for seabirds, adding another dimension to their significance in the local ecosystem. On the tour, viewing these formations from a distance conveys their scale and the power of the ocean that shaped them. The combination of geological wonder, cultural narrative and natural beauty makes Reynisdrangar a focal point for understanding how Icelanders have historically interpreted and inhabited their landscape, finding meaning in the raw forces that continually reshape their environment.