Looking for Iceland’s Loch Ness monster

Whenever there is a big lake there seems to be a legend of a special lake monster living in the lakes. This is the case on Iceland as well – in the big lake of Lagarfljot the giant worm called the Lagarfljotsormur is supposed to live. The creature has been known since Viking times and finally in 2012 it was caught on camera and the video clip of the creature got millions of hits on YouTube.

We drive from the town of Egilsstadir which is located at the end of the lake up along one side of the lake enjoying the views across the lake. We try to spot for monsters in the lake but for unknown reasons we don’t see any worms in the lake today – it must be hiding deep in the water today. There is also supposed to be reindeer living in this area – but they might have migrated to other places for the summer so we don’t spot any reindeer either.

The purple flowers of Iceland at Lagarfljot

We get to a small road crossing over the top of the lake and then we start driving back along the other shore. We still don’t see any monsters of the lake. Instead we arrive in a big forest – this is one of the biggest forests on the entire island. I guess the trees are big by Icelandic standards but by any other standard they are nothing special so we decide not to go out on any major hikes in the forest.

A little after the forest there is an intersection where one road leads back to the main Ring Road around Iceland and another which continues a bit up in the mountains. We take the mountain road which is a decent dirt road. After a bit the road is blocked by a sheep and a lamb which seems to enjoy running on the road when a car approach instead of going to the side. We follow the two for a while until they finally decide to go to the side of the road.

There are some nice views of the mountains and up here there isn’t much traffic so we have everything pretty much to ourselves. After a bit we get to a strange looking small building. It turns out it is a rescue shelter for people who get in trouble in the mountains – I guess this is a place to save yourself if you get in trouble during the colder parts of the year when the shelter can be the difference between life and death. During the summer there probably isn’t a huge demand for the shelter so we just have a look at the inside of the shelter where there is a bunk bed and some supplies you can use in case you have to spend the night.