Bridges Over Troubled Waters

The end of the only mice-free area in Iceland

On 14 July 1974, the Ring Road formally opened; the picture above is taken on that occasion. Until that day, the road around Iceland simply hadn’t been circular. The date marked the opening of the bridge that completed the circle: Skeiðarárbrú. When put into use, this single-lane bridge of 904 metres  — the longest in Iceland  — finally connected the Öræfi area (where Skaftafell in Vatnajökull National Park can now be found) to the west, via road.

Up until then, to get to Skaftafell from Reykjavík would have required that you drive more than 1,000 kilometres, taking you through Akureyri and Egilsstaðir, before finally turning south and west again, past the town of Höfn and then finally across the Jökulsárlón bridge, which opened in 1967. Compared to today, the drive to that same location from Reykjavík is now just over 300 kilometres.

The area between those two bridges is called Öræfi. Once a lush green countryside called Litla-Hérað (e. Little Shire), the area was put to waste by an eruption in Vatnajökull glacier and a subsequent flood in 1362. According to annals of the time, the eruption eviscerated 70 farmsteads, killing everything and everyone in the area, with the exception of “one old lady”.

The area was then unpopulated for half a century and since then, it was known as Öræfi — Icelandic for desert. To demonstrate how isolated it was, with the ocean to the south, the largest glacier in Europe to the north, and large glacial rivers to both east and west, neither mice nor cats lived in the area until the first bridge to connect it to the rest of Iceland was opened in 1967. In short: dog-person heaven.

The Skeiðarárbrú bridge was then decommissioned in 2017 as the river it had bridged had simply moved, making it obsolete. However, you can still see it just south of the current road.