Things to do
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Bobby Fischer Center
A small non-profit museum on Austurvegur holding memorabilia of the 1972 world championship match played in Reykjavík between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky. Fischer took Icelandic citizenship in 2005 and is buried at Laugardælir, a few minutes outside the town. The two together make a short and very specific detour.
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Hotel Grímsborgir
A country hotel in the Grímsnes farmland north of Selfoss, now trading under Kea Hotels, with rooms and suites spread low across the site and hot tubs on the terraces. Kerið is ten minutes away and Þingvellir under an hour. It suits a Golden Circle trip that would rather not sleep in Reykjavík and drive out each morning.
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Kerið
A volcanic crater lake in the Grímsnes area of Iceland's Western Volcanic Zone, and the one crater on that belt whose caldera has stayed most clearly intact. A path runs the red scoria rim and a stair drops to the water at one end. It is privately owned and charges admission, which is unusual in Iceland and is why some tours skip it.
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Ölfusárbrú
The bridge over the Ölfusá, and the reason there is a town here at all: the first suspension bridge opened in 1891 and turned the crossing into the service point for the whole farming region. The present structure was built in 1945 after the original collapsed. Tryggvaskáli, the hut raised to house the bridge workers, still stands at its end and is the oldest building in Selfoss.
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Selfosskirkja
The parish church on a spit in the Ölfusá, built between 1952 and 1956 and consecrated on Palm Sunday of that year. It took more than two decades of argument to get built, in a village that had grown from 171 people to over a thousand while the case was being made. It reads best from the bridge and takes a few minutes inside.
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Skálholt
The seat of Iceland's southern bishops from 1056 until the nineteenth century, a school as well as a see, and for centuries the effective capital of the country. The largest church ever raised in Iceland stood on this ground; the present one dates from 1963 and is much smaller. It sits alone above the Hvítá about half an hour east of Selfoss.
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Urriðafoss
A broad, low fall on the Þjórsá carrying the highest average water flow of any waterfall in Iceland, around 360 cubic metres a second, and the second highest in Europe after the Rhine Falls. It is a few minutes off the ring road and rarely crowded. A hydropower scheme long proposed for this stretch would remove it, and local residents have fought the plan for years.
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Park
Þrastaskógur
A wood of 45 hectares running from Álftavatn down along the Sog, given to the Icelandic youth association by the merchant Tryggvi Gunnarsson on his 77th birthday in 1911 and planted by youth clubs from across the country. It is named for the redwings that fill it. Marked paths and a picnic ground make it one of the few genuinely walkable woods in the south.