FjallsárlónPersonal travel impressions in stories and pictures from Fjallsárlón, Iceland. Click on the pictures to enlarge, send as a free e-card, or download for personal use. You can locate Fjallsárlón and navigate the world using Google Earth Show on map
N 64° 2.795
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After I visited Jökulsárlón and was driving towards the west, I saw the southern reaches of the enormous Vatnajökull glacier and hoped to find a place from where to get a closer look at it. When I saw a dirt track on the right, I could not resist taking it. As I had hoped, the gravel track ultimately led me closer to the glacier lake Fjallsárlón. At one point, I had to stop, as there was a deep crack in the road and I could not continue any more. I walked on, descended towards the lake, and before me, under a sky filled with grey and white clouds, I saw two of the mouths of the Vatnajökull glacier reaching down to the lake.
Just after visiting Jökulsárlón, this was a completely different experience. Here, there are less icebergs, and most of them are smaller. At the same time, Fjallsárlón offers a quite close view on the blue-white wall of the glacier mouth of Fjallsjökull glacier, and the broad and powerful glacier slowly coming down the slopes on the other side of the lake. Here, I found silence, because it is further away from the Ring Road. As there is no direct link to the sea, there were no seals, and while the infamous skúas, big seagulls, seem to breed here in summer, there was no trace of them now. Neither did I see any visitor.
It was just the lake, the icebergs, the glacier, the clouds, the Öræfajökull volcano, and me. This is one of those places of pure nature of which Iceland has so many; places where you can thoroughly enjoy, take your time to soak in the environment, time for reflection. Meanwhile, the sun played with the landscape, sometimes managing to get through the layers of clouds and shining its light on the glacier, making it look whiter, making the blue a deeper blue, causing a bright reflection of the glacier wall into the freezing waters of Fjallsárlón.
