SKEIÐARASANDUR

After Núpstaður, road No. 1 continues between the increasingly present Vatnajökull glacier, and the vast wasteland characterized by the black sands of the Skeiðarársandur where many glacial rivers draw their changing meanders as a result of ice fonts.

Among the many rivers that mingle there with grey alluvial, the Skeiðará, the main river that travels it, comes from the Skeiðarárjökull to the west. It passes to be the most dangerous of the glacial rivers of desert alluvial plain.

Black sands, mixed with volcanic ash, come from catastrophic floods (jökulhlaup) due to the glacier eruptions of the Grímsvötn and Grænalón volcanoes. The construction of long bridges, the work of which was completed only in 1974, allowed the road link through these inhospitable sands, and at the same time the junction of Road No. 1 which crosses Iceland. Until then, the Skeiðarársandur were a major obstacle for travellers.

At the end of 1996, there was once again a large jökullhlaup following the glacier volcano eruption. The melting of the ice formed a huge lake in the pebble of the volcano. When the pressure of water under the glacier became too strong, this gigantic water bubble exploded in an infernal debacle, sweeping the entire Skeiðarársandur plain into a tidal wave of 3 billion cubic metres of water, mud and ice that swept roads and bridges, leaving behind them only pieces of ice, big like icebergs, ripped apart at Vatnajökull, and which put one year to melt. Road No. 1 was cut off. The region was returning to its isolation from the past, until the umpteenth reconstruction of this route of communication, which toured Iceland.