The lava field northeast of Grundarfjörður is about 4,000 years old, which in geological terms is recent enough that the surface has not eroded into softness. The flows buckled as they cooled and the rock froze in those positions, fractured and angular underneath the continuous moss cover that has built up over the intervening millennia. The moss grows thick enough to obscure the texture of the underlying rock until it doesn’t, and the exposed sections show a surface that looks less like stone and more like something interrupted mid-motion.

The Eyrbyggja Saga records that a Norwegian farmer named Víga-Stýr acquired two Swedish berserkers as slaves and put them to work cutting a road through this field in exchange for the hand of his daughter and his foster-daughter.

The berserkers cleared the road. Then Víga-Stýr built a sauna, invited them in, heated it beyond tolerance, and killed them when they came out. The daughters were never given.

The path they cut can still be traced across the field today, a narrow corridor through the lava running toward the fjord. It is not maintained or reconstructed. It is simply still there because nothing has changed around it.