Area guide · 12 minutes east
Sixty metres of thunder at the end of a flat five-minute walk, a staircase to the top of it, and a quiet neighbour one valley east.
Skógafoss is about sixty metres high and twenty-five wide, and it lands flat on the sand so you can walk right up to the base on level ground. The constant spray means that on any sunny day the fall wears a rainbow, often a double one.
A staircase climbs the east side, just over five hundred steps, to a platform looking down over the edge. It is also the first stretch of the Fimmvörðuháls trail, so you can keep walking up the river gorge past a chain of smaller falls for as long as your legs agree.
One valley east, behind the Skógar folk museum, a fifteen to twenty minute walk leads over a stile and into a mossy gorge with Kvernufoss at the end of it. You can walk behind this one, like a smaller and much more private Seljalandsfoss.
On days when the parking at Skógafoss is a bus depot, Kvernufoss can be nearly empty. It is the local trade-off we recommend most.
Drive east on Route 1 for about twelve minutes and turn off at Skógar. The fall is visible from the road. Parking is no longer free, and the signs on site are the authority on the current rate.
For Kvernufoss, park at the Skógar museum end of the same lot and follow the path east behind the buildings.
Questions people ask
Just over five hundred, on a sturdy staircase with a handrail. Take it slowly and the view from the platform over the edge of the fall is worth every one of them.
No, Skógafoss lands too hard for that. Its neighbour Kvernufoss, a short walk east behind the Skógar museum, is the one you can walk behind.
Not once you know it exists. Park by the Skógar folk museum, walk east behind the buildings, cross the stile over the fence and follow the gorge for fifteen to twenty minutes.
Early morning and late evening, outside the day-tour window from Reykjavík. In summer the midnight-sun hours are remarkably quiet, and staying twelve minutes away is what makes them practical.
The Garage sits between Skógafoss and Seljalandsfoss, studio apartments on a working farm under Eyjafjallajökull. Stay here and the quiet hours at both falls are yours.