Skaftafell

Listen first. Somewhere ahead of you, water is moving. It may be a meltwater stream running over grey gravel, or a small waterfall dropping through birch trees. The air is cool and clean, and on most days it carries a faint smell of wet moss and stone. Under your boots, the ground is dark and gritty. That colour is volcanic. Almost everything here was made by fire, and then shaped by ice.

Welcome to Skaftafell, in the Öræfi district of southeast Iceland. This is an oasis of green between two very hostile neighbours. Above you sits Vatnajökull, the largest ice cap in Iceland. To the west lies Skeiðarársandur, a vast black plain of sand and gravel. Skaftafell is the sheltered, wooded slope in between. For centuries, that shelter made it one of the few places in this region where people could farm.

Skaftafell became a national park in its own right in 1967. In 2008, it was folded into the much larger Vatnajökull National Park, which covers a large part of the country. So the place you are standing in is both old and new. It is an old farm, an old protected area, and now one entrance to an enormous wilderness of ice, volcanoes and rivers.

Look up toward the ice, and you may see one of the glacier tongues that slide down from the ice cap. The closest is Skaftafellsjökull. It is an outlet glacier, which means it is a river of ice flowing slowly downhill from the ice cap above. Its surface is not white. It is streaked with grey and black ash, cracked into ridges, and in places it shows a deep, cold blue.

Here is something many visitors miss. The glacier you see today is much smaller than it was a few generations ago. Iceland's glaciers have been retreating for decades. Along the easy path toward the glacier tongue, the ground between you and the ice is newly exposed land. Not long ago, all of it was under ice. Some paths in the area have signs that mark where the glacier front once stood.

Now think about the name of this district. Öræfi roughly means 'wasteland', or 'land without a harbour'. It was not always called that. In 1362, the volcano under the Öræfajökull ice cap erupted with great violence. It was one of the largest explosive eruptions in Iceland since settlement. Farms across the district were destroyed, and the area was left empty for years. The new name carries the memory of that disaster.

That volcano still sits above you. Its summit ridge holds Hvannadalshnúkur, the highest peak in Iceland, a little over two thousand metres tall. Climbing it is a long, serious glacier ascent with a qualified guide. From down here, you may only catch glimpses of it between the clouds. But it is worth knowing that the quiet woodland around you lives at the foot of an active volcano.

For most visitors, the heart of Skaftafell is a waterfall called Svartifoss. The name means 'Black Falls'. The path climbs gently uphill from the visitor centre, and on the way you pass smaller waterfalls along the same stream. Then the trail opens, and you see it. A thin white ribbon of water falls over a cliff of dark basalt columns. The columns hang down like the pipes of a giant organ.

Those columns formed when a thick flow of lava cooled very slowly. As it cooled, it shrank and cracked into regular, many-sided pillars. The same process created famous column formations elsewhere in Iceland and around the world. It is often said that columns like these inspired the architect of Hallgrímskirkja, the great concrete church in Reykjavík. Look at the church later, and you may see the echo.

Turn now toward the west, toward the black plain of Skeiðarársandur. For centuries, the glacial rivers on this plain made travel almost impossible. Iceland's Ring Road was only completed across it in 1974, with a long chain of bridges. Before that, Skaftafell was remote even by Icelandic standards. In 1996, a volcanic eruption under the ice released a huge flood of meltwater. It tore across the plain and destroyed parts of the bridges. Near the road, twisted steel girders from one bridge now stand as a quiet memorial to that flood.

People lived here through all of it. On the slope above the visitor area stands Sel, an old turf farmhouse. Its walls are layered with earth and stone, and grass grows on its roof. Houses like this kept families warm through long, dark winters. Standing beside it, you get a sense of how small human life looked against this landscape. The farmers here worked with the ice, the floods and the volcano as everyday neighbours.

There is another, gentler side to Skaftafell. The slopes hold birch woodland, which is rare in Iceland. Much of the country's original forest was cut down after settlement. Here, sheltered from the wind, birch and willow grow low and twisted. In summer, small flowers grow among the moss, and birds call from the bushes. In autumn, the leaves turn gold and copper against the grey stone and the white ice.

Before you leave, stop for a moment wherever you are standing. Look at the dark gravel at your feet, the green birch on the slope, and the pale tongue of ice above. Each layer came from a different force. Fire made the rock. Ice carved the valleys. Water carried the sand across the plain. And as you walk back down the path, listen again for the water. It is the same meltwater that has shaped this place for thousands of years, still moving, still working.