Vestrahorn and Stokksnes

Today we visited the Stokksnes peninsula to view the Vestrahorn Mountain, visited the abandoned Viking movie set village there, hiked to the Hengifoss waterfall, grabbed dinner in Egilsstaðir, and attempted to check out the village of Seydisfjordur.

We started our day with coffee from a local gas station, and breakfast from the grocery store. Chris got pickled mackerel in mustard with rye bread, and Chels got Icelandic Styr yogurt. After chowing down we drove to the Stokksnes peninsula which afforded magnificent views of Vestrahorn Mountain towering over the area. We visited an abandoned movie set that was a full Viking village. This set was built for a movie that lost funding, so wasn’t used for over a decade until it was eventually used in the Netflix series The Witcher. The village was fun to explore, and really looked unique set against the mountain backdrop. After checking out the village we further explored the peninsula, going all the way to the end to see the lighthouse there.

Our next stop was the Hengifoss waterfall. We did a moderate hike here to see the falls, but the weather really stopped cooperating today and not only were we rained on the whole hike, but the waterfall itself was sadly blanketed in fog when we reached it.

We left Hengifoss and headed to Egilsstaðir for a pizza dinner for our second night in a row. It’s not that we particularly love pizza here, but we were really struggling to find dining options! The pizzas were great, albeit $40 each 😂 It’s been interesting trying to find restaurants in Iceland as many of the small villages will have one or no options for food, with over an hour of driving until the next small village. It really is mostly nature out here for most of the day!

We’d planned for Seydisfjordur to be our last stop of the day, but on our way there a thick fog settled, and we opted to turn around and head to our lodging instead as we couldn’t see much anyhow!Read more