Raufarhöfn In Winter: The Prospect Of Tourism Without The Tourists

A midwinter journey far north reveals intriguing locations, stunning landscapes and blissful solitude

Those of us who have travelled northwards to make this land our home would probably say it’s a pretty damn cool place to live. And Reykjavik revels in the cool of being The World’s Most Northerly Capital City. So extrapolating the concept, it follows that we might expect Iceland’s most northerly settlement to be very cool indeed.

Raufarhöfn — a coastal village in northeast Iceland, at the far-flung latitude of 66.454°N — fits that geographical description. So in the dark of a midwinter morning, my wife and I pointed our hired Dacia Duster eastwards from our Akureyri home to assess Raufarhöfn’s quotient of cool.

Dog paws, Atlantic shores

It’s a 200-km drive to Raufarhöfn through some of northern Iceland’s prime landscape. But breathless reviews of its breathtaking views will have to wait for another time because we saw next to nothing. Heavy snowfall (called hundslappadrífa in Icelandic, hinting at massive snowflakes the size of a dog’s paw) meant that we drove, furrow-browed and concentrating, along roads on which the edges were barely visible.

Winter is, hands down, my favourite time in Iceland. But if you visit then, prepare yourself to be at the whim of the weather gods. And please, make sure you know how to drive in snow; you don’t want to find the edge of the road the hard way.
“Eventually the cold overrode our desire to spend more time among the stones, and prodded us back to the car.”

As we eventually entered the grounds of the Grásteinn Guesthouse, our farm-hosted accommodation just outside Þórshöfn, a flurry of black and white fur flashed across our headlights and then raced alongside us. Arctic foxes? I reached excitedly for my camera, but no; it was Kappi and Bessi, the farm sheepdogs, welcoming us. Moving our bags from the car to our cosy little cottage, we were “helped” in the task by excited leaping and a firm insistence on extended fussings.

When dawn came the snowfall had stopped, and we were able to fully appreciate the remoteness of our location. Our north-facing porch overlooked a valley — coated in pure white, and bathed in pale pink light as the sun rose — containing nothing but a couple of distant farms. And other than the low roar of the Atlantic to our east, breaking on a distant shore, there was not a sound.

Spiritual stones

As we entered Raufarhöfn that morning, the Duster dashboard declared it to be -6°C outside: not so much northern cool at that point, as downright bloody freezing. As you drive through the little town your eye is drawn to the top of nearby Malrakkaás hill, from which vantage point Heimskautsgerðið — also known as The Arctic Henge, after England’s Stonehenge — dominates the landscape.

Heimskautsgerðið is an art project, a tourist attraction, a reflection of Icelandic literary culture, a source of civic pride and a functional solar calendar — all rolled into one. It comprises several arches of up to 10 metres high, made of locally quarried stones each weighing as much as three tonnes.

The four arches to the outside are named Norðri, Suðri, Austri and Vestri after the four cardinal compass directions, and also after the mythical dwarves in Icelandic literature who are responsible for holding up the sky. These are carefully constructed around a flat site some 50 metres across so that they align with the sun in quite specific ways, its rays never being blocked by mountains or buildings thanks to the surrounding low-lying planar landscape.
“The current lack of visitor infrastructure is quite refreshing, conveying the sense of a place of natural beauty rather than that of a tourist attraction.”

We passed the town’s snowplough, busily scooping and shoving yesterday’s fall aside. It seems that their remit doesn’t extend to clearing the road up to the Heimskautsgerðið car park, but our plucky Duster chugged up the hill with minimal slippage and we found ourselves the only visitors.

As we wrapped up for the cold we witnessed two other cars enter the car park separately, circle around without stopping and immediately leave. Is this some sort of box-ticking drive-by tourism, where you just do a lap of the car park at a notable location rather than get out? Weird. Anyway, once we were out ourselves in the frigid sunshine, it was a short trudge up to the stones.

Heimskautsgerðið is a quietly thrilling experience, particularly when you have it to yourself. The low winter sun shone on certain stone facets but left others in shaded contrast, and reflected off the fresh snow to illuminate arches from beneath. There was little wind to rustle anything, and in any case the thick blanket of white stuff muffled all sound (even that distant snowplough). My soft southern fingers stung every time I had to remove my skiing gloves to adjust camera settings, and eventually the cold overrode our desire to spend more time among the stones, and prodded us back to the car.

The Heimskautsgerðið project is managed by a non-profit organisation in Raufarhöfn, and was started some 20 years ago by a hotelier in the town. It’s still a work in progress and that, alongside its modern provenance, makes it more akin to Gaudí’s Sagrada Família in Barcelona than to Stonehenge: beautiful and spiritual, but unfinished and perpetually in search of funds.

From a logistical perspective, Heimskautsgerðið is still in the early stages of its development as a tourist attraction; there are no facilities onsite, so visit businesses in town for refreshments and toilets before you go up the hill. Parking and entrance are free, and available around the clock. The current lack of visitor infrastructure is quite refreshing, conveying as it does the sense of a place of natural beauty rather than that of a tourist attraction. Enjoy it while it lasts.

You can’t miss the hi-viz lighthouse

Looking southeast from Heimskautsgerðið there is a raised outcrop of land jutting into the Atlantic, topped by a bright orange lighthouse fashioned in that square, quintessentially Icelandic style. Driving over for a closer look, we found that the land surrounding the Raufarhafnarviti lighthouse (built in 1931, and still flashing away) made a marvellous lookout point to view Raufarhöfn and the surrounding area.

On a hill to the west of the town stand the bretastangir, or British rods; radio communication towers built by the occupying forces during the Second World War. And descending the outcrop brings you past Raufarhafnarkirkja, the town’s Lutheran church, which was built in 1928 to the specification of Guðjón Samúelsson. He also designed the Lutheran church in Akureyri, and the iconic Hallgrímskirkja in Reykjavík; as the State Architect of Iceland in the early 20th century, Guðjón was your go-to guy for Lutheran churches.

In the mid-20th century Raufarhöfn was a bustling fishing village which, in season, boasted several thousand inhabitants industriously making the most of the herring boom. Since then it has become considerably quieter, and is now home to maybe 200 souls.

It’s fair to say that the town now contains not much more than is necessary for that level of inhabitation, but don’t imagine for a moment that means there’s no reason to visit — quite the opposite in fact. Its fishing and wartime histories provide fascinating cultural counterpoints to the stunning surrounding landscape, and the more recent initiative of Heimskautsgerðið bumps up its cool quotient considerably.

John Pearson is a journalist and photographer. You can follow his work at johnpearson.co.