Jökulsárlón

Jökulsárlón sits right beside Iceland’s Ring Road, which makes the first sight of it slightly surreal. You step out of the car and there it is: a cold, blue grey lagoon filled with icebergs, some clean and luminous, others streaked black with volcanic ash. Seals regularly appear between them.

The strange thing is how recent all this is. Jökulsárlón only began to form in the 1930s, when Breiðamerkurjökull started retreating and left a deep basin behind. A century earlier the glacier had pushed so far towards the coast that only about 250 metres separated the ice from the Atlantic. People once farmed parts of the surrounding plain.

The icebergs still follow that route to the sea. They break from the glacier, drift slowly across the lagoon and pass through the short river to the ocean. Some are washed back onto the black beach at Fellsfjara, where clear blocks of ice lie scattered across the volcanic sand.

Hollywood used the setting for Die Another Day, even temporarily limiting seawater entering the lagoon so it could freeze for a Bond car chase. Jökulsárlón hardly needed the special effects.