Katla Volcano and Mýrdalsjökull Glacier

The Mýrdalsjökull glacier covers Katla, one of Iceland's most powerful and most closely watched volcanoes, and the combination of ice cap and active caldera creates a landscape of considerable tension. The glacier is visible from Vik and from the roads in the area; organized glacier tours and ice cave tours operate from the edge of the glacier year-round, with different conditions in summer and winter.

Ice cave tours — usually running from October to March, when the ice is stable enough to enter — have become enormously popular, as the blue ice formations within the glacier are visually unlike anything above the surface. Tours depart from various points around the south coast; most operators offer pickups from Vik. In summer, snowmobile tours on the glacier surface are available. The glacier itself is retreating measurably year on year, and the ice caves that exist today will likely not exist in the same form in a few decades.

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Katla is one of Iceland's most dangerous volcanoes, not primarily because of the eruption itself but because of the jökulhlaup — a glacial outburst flood — that accompanies it. When Katla erupts under the Mýrdalsjökull ice cap, it melts enormous volumes of ice within hours, releasing a flood that can carry boulders, ice blocks, and water at 200,000 cubic metres per second — larger than the combined flow of all rivers in the Amazon. The Mýrdalssandur outwash plain south of the glacier, a vast black desert, was shaped by exactly these floods. Katla's last major eruption was in 1918; volcanologists consider it overdue.