Europe's most powerful hot spring — and the reason a whole region's showers run hot
180 L/s
Flow rate
97°C
Water temp (near boiling)
64km
Pipeline to Akranes
Free
To visit
The Story
This is a genuinely quick stop — you'll be here 10-15 minutes — but it's doing more heavy lifting than almost anything else on this trip. Deildartunguhver surges out of the ground at 180 liters per second, at a temperature just shy of boiling, making it the highest-output hot spring anywhere in Europe. It's been harnessed since the 1920s, and since the 1970s its water has fed a pipeline stretching 64 kilometers to the towns of Akranes and Borgarnes — one of the longest hot-water pipelines in the world.
The genuinely remarkable part: the water is still around 70-80°C by the time it arrives, over 60km away. If you shower anywhere in this region, there's a real chance the hot water came from the exact spot you're standing on.
Fun Trivia
Things most visitors don't know
It's named after a farm, not a place. "Deildartunguhver" literally means "Deildartunga's hot spring" — Deildartunga being the farm that historically sat beside it.
A rare fern thrives here because of the heat. The ostrich fern (struthiopteris) grows unusually well in the warm, humid microclimate the spring creates — a small green anomaly in an otherwise stark landscape.
The red and orange tint in the ground isn't paint or rust — it's alive. Heat-loving algae and mineral deposits color the rock and soil around the vents in genuine reds, greens, and oranges.
It's five minutes from where Iceland's most famous saga was written. Reykholt, your next stop, was home to Snorri Sturluson — more on him there.