The black sand of Breiðamerkursandur at the mouth of the Jökulsárlón outlet, where icebergs carried out to sea are thrown back onto the shore by the surf and lie stranded on the sand until they melt.
Glacier ice on black sand, restocked by every tide, so no two visits show the same beach.
Diamond Beach sits on the other side of Route 1 from the lagoon, an ocean beach, Fellsfjara to the maps, on the Breiðamerkursandur outwash plain, a few minutes of flat walking over sand, with car parks on both the west and east sides of the river, so people who find only one have seen half of it and driven away. What is on the sand is a lottery, and not the seasonal one visitors assume: calving runs all year, a storm can carpet the beach overnight, some days there is nothing there at all, and the biggest blocks turn up in September as readily as in February. Look, and come back later in the day if it is bare. Do not climb on stranded bergs or stand between them, because they are slippery, sharp-edged and they roll. And do not turn your back on the water: the failure mode is standing with a camera up, and sneaker waves on this coast have killed people. Waterproof boots. When the Jökulsárlón car park is full, and in July it will be, Fjallsárlón is about 10 kilometres west, down a short paved spur off Route 1, smaller and much quieter, with a café, a summer zodiac operation and a closer view of the glacier front; Breiðárlón, quieter again, lies inland between the two lagoons.
A proglacial lagoon of about 25 square kilometres that began forming in the 1930s as Breiðamerkurjökull retreated. At over 280 metres it…
A lagoon of about 4 square kilometres below Fjallsjökull, roughly 10 kilometres west of Jökulsárlón, with the Öræfajökull volcano above it.…
A turf roofed church at Hof in Öræfi, built in 1884 by the carpenter Páll Pálsson, 9.8 metres long and 4.5 metres wide, with a timber frame…
Every other travel app asks you to start logging. Meridian Dispatch opens with years of your travel already written, from the photographs you already took.