Gunnuhver Hot Springs looks exactly like you’d expect Iceland to look if you removed the waterfalls, horses, tour buses and people soaking in suspiciously blue water.
The fucking ground is boiling.
Steam pours across the landscape. Gray mud violently bubbles beneath wooden walkways. The air smells like somebody boiled ten thousand eggs and then weaponized them. And the entire landscape has that distinctly Icelandic quality where you’re never completely sure whether you’re standing on a tourist attraction or something that’s about to become a geological incident.
Welcome to the Reykjanes Peninsula.
I ended up at Gunnuhver during a week exploring this corner of Iceland, which had recently been having a bit of a disagreement with the Earth’s crust.
I booked a last-minute flight after volcanic activity around nearby Grindavík started looking particularly interesting. There was plenty of speculation that another eruption was imminent.
It wasn’t.
So instead of photographing fresh lava, I spent the week exploring the increasingly bizarre landscape surrounding Grindavík.
As consolation prizes go, Gunnuhver was pretty cool.
DESTINATION: Gunnuhver Hot Springs
GPS COORDINATES
63.8192, -22.6845
CLOSEST AIRPORT
CURRENT WEATHER
scattered clouds (43F / 6C)
AIR QUALITY INDEX (AQI)
Air-quality data is currently unavailable.
THE VOLCANO IS BUFFERING
Gunnuhver isn’t some cute little geothermal spring where you dip your toes in warm water and reconnect with nature.
You absolutely should not dip anything into this.
This entire geothermal freak show is powered by the same volcanic activity currently raising hell beneath the Reykjanes Peninsula. Magma moving underground heats the surrounding rock and groundwater, sending boiling water, mud and steam toward the surface.
Basically, the volcano might not be erupting, but there’s still a metric fuckton of stuff happening downstairs.
The main mud pool is roughly 20 meters across, constantly churning gray sludge while steam vents hiss and blast vapor into the air. Depending on the wind, the whole place can disappear behind a wall of steam before dramatically reappearing seconds later.
It’s like watching a volcano’s loading screen.
No lava yet. Just bubbling, steaming and an increasingly concerning amount of background activity.
The volcano was buffering.
Gunnuhver was the spinning wheel.
AND THERE’S AN ANGRY GHOST, BECAUSE OF COURSE THERE IS
Apparently boiling mud wasn’t interesting enough, so Icelandic folklore added a pissed-off ghost.
Gunnuhver supposedly gets its name from Gunna, a woman whose ghost began terrorizing locals after she died following a dispute over unpaid rent.
Yes.
Unpaid fucking rent.
According to the legend, a priest eventually used a magical rope to lure Gunna into the geothermal springs, where her spirit was trapped.
Science says the steam and boiling mud are caused by geothermal activity.
Iceland says there’s an angry dead woman living underneath it.
After spending a few minutes standing there listening to the place hiss and rumble, I’m comfortable leaving both explanations on the table.
THIS IS THE BLUE LAGOON WITHOUT THE BATHROBES
Iceland has become exceptionally good at monetizing hot water.
The Blue Lagoon gives you milky blue water, cocktails, spa treatments and enough Instagram content to sustain humanity for several centuries.
Gunnuhver gives you boiling mud and sulfur fumes.
I’ll take Gunnuhver.
There are no lockers.
No swim-up bar.
No facial treatments.
No influencers slowly walking backward through geothermal mist.
Just wooden walkways sitting above an increasingly questionable section of planet Earth.
Signs tell you to stay on those walkways because the surrounding ground can be unstable and extremely hot.
This shouldn’t require explanation.
Unfortunately, humanity has repeatedly demonstrated otherwise.
THEN THERE’S GRINDAVÍK
Gunnuhver would be interesting anywhere.
Visiting it beside Grindavík makes it something else entirely.
The town had recently survived multiple eruptions and evacuations, with lava coming terrifyingly close to swallowing parts of it. Fresh black lava covered huge sections of the surrounding landscape.
Driving through the area felt surreal.
There were roads, houses and normal pieces of everyday civilization sitting beside enormous fields of fresh volcanic rock that hadn’t existed there very long before.
That puts Gunnuhver’s bubbling mud and screaming steam vents into perspective.
This isn’t some isolated geological novelty.
The entire peninsula is alive.
I’ve seen that same uncomfortable relationship between humans and geology elsewhere, particularly at Indonesia’s Lapindo Mud Volcano, where entire villages disappeared beneath an unstoppable flow of mud.
We build roads.
We build houses.
We establish towns.
The Earth occasionally looks at all that infrastructure and says:
That’s adorable.
THE VOLCANO I CAME FOR WAS BEING AN ASSHOLE
There was also a slightly ridiculous subplot happening throughout this trip.
I’d bought my ticket to Iceland at the last minute because volcanic activity around Grindavík was ramping up and seemingly everyone watching the situation thought another eruption could happen soon.
I figured I’d take my chances.
I flew to Iceland.
Rented a car.
Positioned myself near one of the most volcanically active places on Earth.
And waited.
The volcano responded by doing absolutely fucking nothing.
So I explored.
GUNNUHVER IS RIDICULOUSLY EASY TO VISIT
The best part is that Gunnuhver requires almost no effort.
It’s only a short drive from Keflavík Airport, making it one of those rare places where you can land in Iceland and be standing beside violently boiling Earth shortly afterward.
Combine Gunnuhver with Grindavík, Reykjanesviti Lighthouse, the surrounding lava fields and the coastline and you’ve got an excellent little tour of the Reykjanes Peninsula without driving halfway across Iceland.
Bring waterproof clothes.
Bring a camera.
Bring something to wipe condensation off your lens.
And stay on the fucking walkway.
The signs aren’t there because Iceland hates fun.
They’re there because geothermal areas have an unfortunate tendency to cook people who dramatically overestimate the structural integrity of dirt.
ICELAND DOESN’T NEED THE VOLCANO TO ERUPT
I originally came to this part of Iceland hoping to photograph something considerably more dramatic.
That never happened.
But standing at Gunnuhver, surrounded by steam and boiling mud with recently devastated Grindavík just down the road, you don’t exactly need an erupting volcano to understand what’s happening underneath the Reykjanes Peninsula.
This place is geologically pissed off.
The ground boils.
Steam explodes from vents.
Fresh lava covers landscapes that recently looked completely different.
And entire towns are discovering just how temporary humans can be when geology decides to redecorate.
My volcano never erupted.
Gunnuhver was more than happy to remind me that it still could.
