The Fjadrarglijufur River Canyon is a nice stop between Vik and Hofn with a lower and upper parking lot. We parked in the lower one, then hiked along the rim to see this one-kilometer long narrow canyon that is 100 meters deep and quite beautiful. The river has that blue-glacier color.

We stopped at a nearby visitor’s center that just opened two years ago and has a brand new exhibit area. We walked on the roof to get pictures of a waterfall behind it and learned about jolulhlaup, a semiannual flood caused when a geothermal area under a glacier causes melt water to accumulate and then discharge. We can see the extra road work that these regular floods have caused.

Kirkjubaejarklauster was just down the road and had two monuments that we stopped to see. Kirkjugolf means church floor and the two-foot high basalt columns uncovered here look like tile floor with 6-sides the most common shape, but with ranges of 4-10 sides. Hildir’s grave mound was also here with the story that Hildir was a pagan who dropped dead when he set foot on forbidden Christian land, then the Christians kindly buried him.

Jokulsa a Dal utsynispallur was a road-side stop as we left the town of Egilsstadir. It has a small parking lot with a short walk to an old walking bridge that spanned the beautiful blue water in the canyon. This is private land that is open for stops.

Kolugjufur Canyon was another river with waterfalls that had gorgeous blue water. Pictures do not capture the color adequately.