Lakagigar Crater Row

In the 1780s a fissure opened in the highlands north of Kirkjubaejarklaustur and erupted for months, putting out an enormous volume of lava and a haze that ruined grazing across the country and brought years of hunger behind it. What is left is Lakagigar: a line of craters, scores of them, running across the upland in a more or less straight row with the hill of Laki about halfway along. Moss has covered most of it, so the cones read as soft green mounds with red and black cinder showing through. From the top of Laki the row is visible stretching away in both directions, which is the only way to take in the scale of it.

Highlights

• The crater row - cones lined up along the fissure, running toward the horizon both ways.
• Laki hill - a climb of roughly half an hour for the view along the whole row.
• The moss cover - thick grey-green moss grown over old lava and cinder.
• The lava field - the flow that ran south from here and reached the lowland farms.

When to go

The track opens when the rivers drop, usually late June, and closes again with the first serious weather in September. It is a full day from the ring road and back with no fuel or food on the way. A guided day trip out of Kirkjubaejarklaustur removes the driving problem, and that is what most visitors end up doing.

Good to know

F206 is genuinely rough, with river crossings that are not bridged and that change depth through the day; a small four-wheel drive is not always enough, and insurance does not cover water damage. There is no signal for most of it. Cloud sits on the highland often, and in it the craters are grey humps and nothing more.

Nearby

Kirkjubaejarklaustur and the moss-covered lava along the ring road are the way in and out.

Key facts