Gunnuhver

Gunnuhver is a field of fumaroles, hot springs and boiling mud pots at the very end of the Reykjanes Peninsula, a short drive from Keflavík Airport and close to the Reykjanesviti lighthouse. It lies where the Mid-Atlantic Ridge comes ashore, within the Reykjanes UNESCO Global Geopark, and its main mud pool – about twenty metres across – is said to be the largest in Iceland. Unusually, the hot fluids that feed it are derived from seawater rather than fresh groundwater, and the steam clouds that hang over the site rarely disperse.

The name means “Gunna’s hot spring”, and it comes from one of Iceland’s best-known ghost stories. According to the folk tale, at the turn of the 18th century a poor woman called Guðrún Önundardóttir – Gunna – rented her home from a lawyer, Vilhjálmur Jónsson. When she could not pay, he seized her cooking pot, probably the most valuable thing she owned. Gunna cursed him and the land around her. Soon afterwards she died; the pallbearers found her coffin strangely light, and not long after the funeral Vilhjálmur himself was found dead. Gunna’s ghost, people said, was now haunting the district.

The terrified locals turned to a famous priest and sorcerer of Icelandic legend, Séra Eiríkur of Vogsósar, who gave them a ball of yarn and told them to let Gunna’s ghost take hold of the loose end. The yarn led her to the hot spring, and in most versions she fell into the boiling water and was trapped there for good; in others she still paces the rim, unable to let go. Local tourism officials note that a Guðrún Önundardóttir does appear on a census of the period, so the tale may preserve a memory of a real woman.

Today Gunnuhver is one of the most visited stops on the Reykjanes peninsula, with boardwalks and viewing platforms leading through the steam. The earth here is genuinely restless: in September 2014 a sudden surge in mud-geyser activity damaged the walkways and closed the area, and access has been adjusted during the peninsula’s recent volcanic eruptions.

Visitors say they can hear Gunna falling or wailing in the roar of the steam vents, and some describe a shadowy figure moving along the edge of the mud pool, hidden and revealed by the drifting steam.

The main mud pool and the steam vents along the boardwalk, especially when thick steam hangs over the site.

Gunna’s story is told in Icelandic folk-tale collections and on every tour of the Reykjanes peninsula, where Séra Eiríkur of Vogsósar features in many other legends of clever priests outwitting ghosts. Gunnuhver is a highlight of the Reykjanes UNESCO Global Geopark.