Laufskálavarða

A tradition before crossing Mýrdalssandur

The hundreds of cairns at Laufskálavarða were not originally created as decoration. According to tradition, travellers passing this way for the first time were expected to build a cairn for good fortune before continuing across Mýrdalssandur. The origin of the custom is unknown, but its location gives it a clear practical and emotional context.

Crossing the sandur was once a serious undertaking. Rivers were unbridged, sections of sand could be unstable, and poor visibility made navigation difficult across the open landscape. Katla and the jökulhlaup released from beneath Mýrdalsjökull added a danger that travellers could neither control nor predict. Building a small cairn could not make the route safer, but it gave physical form to the hope of completing the journey and returning home.

The cairns therefore belong to the history of travel through Iceland. They represent the moment before people entered a hazardous landscape rather than simply marking a scenic roadside location.

A once densely settled landscape

The present openness of Mýrdalssandur and upper Álftaver can make it difficult to imagine substantial settlement here. During the early settlement period, however, Álftaver and the land east of Mýrdalssandur were among the more densely settled parts of the young country.

Landnámabók tells how Molda-Gnúpur claimed Álftaver and sold parts of his land to numerous people. It specifically says that the district became densely settled before volcanic fire flowed across it. The same source records that Hrafn hafnarlykill settled between Hólmsá and Eyjará and lived at Dynskógar. According to the account, he anticipated an eruption and moved his farm to Lágey.

These stories describe a landscape very different from the one visible today. Productive wetlands, lakes and access to natural resources attracted settlement, but the district also stood directly in the path of volcanic activity and floods from Katla. Repeated eruptions, jökulhlaup and sediment deposition gradually altered the land, destroyed farms and reduced the extent of settlement.

Laufskálar and the twenty-four doors

Laufskálavarða takes its name from the farm Laufskálar, which is believed to have stood somewhere nearby. Old accounts describe it as a large and important farm. One particularly memorable tradition says that the buildings contained twenty-four doors hung on iron hinges.

The number should not be treated as a verified architectural survey. No remains of the farm have been identified, and the account comes through later written tradition. Nevertheless, the detail was recorded by the early twentieth century and appears on the information sign at the site. In the context of an early Icelandic farm, twenty-four hinged doors were intended to communicate exceptional size and substance.

The story matters because it contradicts the apparent emptiness of the surroundings. Laufskálar was not imagined as a marginal shelter standing alone on the sand. It belonged to a settled district where land was divided among numerous households before natural events transformed the area.

A farm whose location has been lost

Many modern accounts state that Laufskálar was destroyed in a Katla eruption in 894, but the historical evidence does not support presenting that precise year with certainty. More careful accounts place the destruction in a Katla jökulhlaup around 980, while the surviving tradition is clearer about the farm’s disappearance than about its date.

An archaeological survey undertaken around Laufskálavarða in 2018 did not find identifiable remains of the farm, and its exact location remains unknown. The absence of visible ruins is unsurprising in a landscape repeatedly altered by floods, volcanic sediment, shifting rivers and windblown sand.

Laufskálavarða should therefore not be presented as the confirmed farmstead itself. It is a place that carries the farm’s name and preserves its story after the physical settlement disappeared. That distinction makes the history more credible without diminishing it.

The GPS of their time

Before roads, maps and electronic navigation, cairns formed an essential information system across Iceland. Along established routes they were often positioned so that a traveller standing beside one cairn could identify the next. Following the sequence made it possible to hold a course across open sand, lava, heath or mountain terrain where the path itself might disappear beneath snow, drifting sand or poor visibility. In that sense, the cairns were the GPS of their time: they did not provide coordinates, but they connected one known point to the next.

Cairns also communicated other kinds of information. Some warned of dangerous ground such as fissures, cliffs or marshes, while others marked boundaries between farms, municipalities or upland grazing areas. Cairns on prominent summits could identify high points or support surveying. Along the coast, two landmarks viewed in alignment could serve as sjómið or sundmerki, helping sailors establish their position or follow a safe approach towards a landing place.

Their cultural roles were equally varied. Travellers sometimes added a stone as an áheit, an act connected with a wish for protection or good fortune. Memorial cairns recalled people or events. At cairns known as beinakerlingar, travellers left written verses for those following behind, often placing the message inside an animal bone for protection from the weather.

These general functions should not be assigned automatically to every cairn at Laufskálavarða. The dominant tradition here is the act of building a cairn for good fortune before crossing Mýrdalssandur. Understanding the wider history nevertheless explains why a cairn was such a natural and meaningful object for travellers to create at this particular place.

Cairns that cannot be dated

The cairns vary considerably in age, size and construction. Individual cairns cannot be dated simply by looking at them, and many were undoubtedly built in recent times. The present collection is therefore not an untouched group of structures surviving from the settlement period.

Its value lies instead in the continuity of the idea. Generation after generation associated this point with the crossing of Mýrdalssandur and repeated the act of placing stones. Older cairns, later additions and modern interventions have accumulated into one complex cultural landscape.

This also means that visitors should not invent ages or purposes for individual cairns. They were not necessarily route markers, memorials or structures belonging to the vanished farm. Together they preserve a travel tradition, but the history of each stone pile is generally unknown.

Preserve the tradition without continuing it

Although the old custom involved adding stones, visitors are now asked not to build new cairns or add to those already present. Laufskálavarða is protected, and the existing cairns form part of its cultural character. Moving stones changes both the archaeological setting and the surface of the lava ridge.

This is an important change in how the tradition is understood. Respecting Laufskálavarða no longer means repeating the action of earlier travellers. It means leaving the cairns undisturbed and recognising why they were built.

The distinction also prevents the site from becoming an unrestricted field of newly constructed stone piles. The old custom retains its meaning because it belongs to a particular route, landscape and period of travel. New cairns created merely as personal souvenirs weaken rather than preserve that story.

A short stop with a wide view

Laufskálavarða is an accessible roadside destination suited to a visit of approximately 30 minutes. A short walk leads among the cairns, while the viewing platform on the roof of the small service building provides a higher perspective across the ridge and surrounding plain.

The principal view is towards Mýrdalsjökull, with the cairns forming a human foreground beneath the glacier. This relationship brings the site’s history together: the small stone structures represent travellers, while the glacier conceals Katla and the source of the floods that made travelling across the region so uncertain.

The strongest visit is not necessarily the longest. Time is better spent looking closely at the different cairns, reading the information and viewing the ridge in relation to Mýrdalsjökull than attempting to explore beyond the established visitor area.

• Laufskálavarða stands between Hólmsá and Skálm beside Route 1 in Álftaver.
• The principal lava ridge measures approximately 48 × 20 metres.
• Tradition required first-time travellers across Mýrdalssandur to build a cairn for good fortune.
• Before modern roads and navigation, cairns marked routes, hazards and boundaries, while coastal alignments helped sailors establish their position.
• The origin of the cairn-building custom is unknown.
• Laufskálar was traditionally described as a large farm with twenty-four doors on iron hinges.
• Archaeological surveying has not identified the location or remains of the farm.
• Visitors should not build new cairns or add stones to existing ones.