Some parts of Iceland have seen record-low temperatures, but that hasn’t stopped tourists from enjoying themselves.
As reported, unusually low temperatures have swept across Iceland over the past two days. While temperatures in the capital got as low as -13°C, MBL reports that the Mývatn area of north Iceland hit a bone-chilling -31°C yesterday.
Meteorologist Trausti Jónsson pointed out that this is the coldest temperatures recorded in Iceland since 8 March 1998, when the mercury dropped to -34°C. In fact, yesterday’s temperatures at Mývatn are the lowest recorded temperatures in Iceland for December 6 of any year.
Undaunted by these temperatures, tourists around Mývatn decided to enjoy some outdoor bathing in -31° C temperatures.
“It’s fine to show up in this kind of weather. The damned wind is our enemy,” Birgir Steingrímsson, a caretaker for the baths, told reporters. “There was this crappy northwestern blowing and it was snowing ice nails yesterday, but [the cold] is actually the best weather.”
Birgir says between 25 and 30 tourists took a dip in the baths, some of them borrowing hats. He added that this is the most tourists he has seen at the baths in December.
In case you were wondering, the lowest recorded temperature in Iceland was -38°C, in 1918, at Grímsstaðir and Möðrudalur in northeast Iceland.
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