Namafjall - the breathing desert Iceland, where you can peer into the Earth's interior (30 photos + 1 video)

Imagine a desert where, instead of silence, you hear a hollow murmur, and instead of mirages, you see clouds of steam smelling of sulfur. This isn't fiction, but a real place in northeastern Iceland.





Here exists a paradoxical place – a breathing desert. Usually, a desert landscape is a realm of stasis and silence. Only the occasional tumbleweed will creep past, and a few cacti will stand motionless in the sun. But here in Iceland, there is a place that defies all norms. It's a desert that boils, bubbles, and seethes.



Namafjall is a geothermal area east of Lake Mývatn. It resembles a hybrid of an alien landscape and the hell from Dante's Divine Comedy. At the foot of a formidable volcanic ridge, a whole collection of mud pots and fumaroles—cracks in the ground from which sulfurous gases erupt—have gathered.





The road to this place initially deceives the eye. The landscape could easily be mistaken for ordinary deserts. But as you approach Namafjall, any sense of familiarity disappears. Here, the desert gapes and steams like a giant boiling kettle. Only instead of water, fumaroles and mud pits spew acrid steam into the atmosphere. To enjoy this unique landscape, you must endure the stench emanating from the earth's cracks—the lingering smell of rotten eggs.



These fumes have driven out all vegetation from the area (as well as tourists with a sensitive sense of smell), leaving behind a near-Martian emptiness. But if you overcome the smell, a world like no other opens before you. Besides the fumaroles and boiling mud, the ground here is adorned with vibrant streaks of mineral deposits—yellow, orange, red, and emerald. So, even devoid of flora, this soil pulsates with a color that even the most lush mosses and lichens could not rival.







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