Vík í Mýrdal

Where it sits. Vík í Mýrdal is the southernmost village in Iceland, a settlement of roughly seven hundred and fifty people on Route 1 about 180 kilometres east of Reykjavik, wedged between the sea and the steep green wall of Reynisfjall. To the west the headland of Dyrhólaey closes the bay; to the east the black outwash desert of Mýrdalssandur runs for 30 kilometres toward the isolated bluff of Hjörleifshöfði. Behind the village, the Mýrdalsjökull ice cap fills the skyline and hides the Katla volcano. Vík has no harbour and never has had one: the surf on this coast is too heavy for a pier, so boats were historically hauled up the black sand, and the modern economy runs on the road instead.

Living under a volcano. Katla, beneath the ice ten kilometres north, has erupted around twenty times since Iceland was settled, most recently in a major event in 1918 that flushed so much sediment out across Mýrdalssandur that the coastline advanced several kilometres seaward. The hazard is not lava but the jökulhlaup, a glacial outburst flood carrying ice, ash and boulders at discharges that briefly rival the world's largest rivers. Vík's evacuation plan sends residents uphill to the white church, Víkurkirkja, built in 1934 on the slope above the village, and the community drills for it. That the church is also the most photographed building in the village, framed against the sea with lupins in front of it in June, is a coincidence with a rather serious explanation behind it.

On screen. The Vík district was the southern base for Game of Thrones' Icelandic filming and supplied a great deal of the lands beyond the Wall. Höfðabrekka, a farm and hotel five kilometres east, housed crew during the shoots, and the dark heathland and black sand plains behind it were used for ranging sequences north of the Wall, including material from the second season with Jon Snow and the Night's Watch party and from the seventh-season wight hunt filmed here in the winter of 2016 and 2017. The choice was practical as much as visual: within an hour of Vík a production can reach black beaches, glacier tongues, canyons and a genuine snow line, and Route 1 gets trucks to all of them.

What you actually see today. The village itself is compact — a fuel station, a supermarket, several hotels and guesthouses, a wool factory shop that has been selling Icelandic knitwear since the 1950s, and the church on its hill. The real content is within fifteen minutes' drive. Reynisfjara, the black beach with its basalt colonnade and the Hálsanefshellir cave, is five kilometres west by Route 215. Dyrhólaey, a 120-metre promontory with a lighthouse and a sea arch large enough for a boat to pass through, lies just beyond it and closes partially during the seabird nesting season. The beach directly below the village gives the standard view of the Reynisdrangar sea stacks, and the path up Reynisfjall from the village end reaches puffin ground between May and August.

The weather, which is the deciding factor. Vík is among the wettest inhabited places in Iceland, with annual precipitation around 2,000 to 2,300 millimetres, roughly three times what Reykjavik receives. Wind is the more serious constraint: this stretch of the south coast regularly records gusts strong enough to close Route 1 over Mýrdalssandur, strip paint from cars in ash storms and blow open vehicle doors in the car parks. Icelandic road and weather services publish colour-coded warnings, and they are not decorative. In winter the village makes a good base for the ice caves in Kötlujökull, reached by modified vehicles from here, and for aurora, since the northern horizon over the ice cap is dark and open.

Getting there and timing. The drive from Reykjavik takes around two and a half hours in good conditions, longer with the standard stops at Seljalandsfoss and Skógafoss. Scheduled buses run daily along Route 1 in summer and less often in winter. Vík is the last full-service town before Kirkjubæjarklaustur, 70 kilometres east, so it is the sensible place to refuel and buy food before the sand plains. Accommodation books out well ahead from June to August, and prices reflect it; late September to early November and the second half of April tend to offer the best combination of open roads, thin crowds and reasonable rates. Whatever the season, plan for the possibility that the weather removes a day from the itinerary rather than treating that as bad luck. The Katla UNESCO Global Geopark, designated in 2011, covers this district and publishes trail, hazard and geology information for it, which is a better starting point for planning than a generic south-coast itinerary.