"Door Hill Island" — an arch so big a daredevil actually flew a plane through it
120m
Height of the promontory
1927
Lighthouse built
1993
Year a plane flew through the arch
Free
To visit
The Story
Dyrhólaey literally means "Door Hill Island" — a direct description of its defining feature: a massive natural rock arch carved through the headland by centuries of relentless wave erosion. The arch is genuinely enormous, large enough for small boats to sail through in calm conditions. In 1993, an Icelandic pilot took that a step further and flew a small plane straight through it — a stunt that's still talked about locally decades later.
The promontory itself used to be a true island, known historically as Cape Portland, before it eventually connected to the mainland. It's volcanic in origin, and the two halves show genuinely different geology up close: the western side is tuff and basalt from underwater eruptions, while the eastern side shows pillow lava and columnar basalt — different eruption styles, different rock, visible in the same short walk.
As You Walk Around
Easy to miss if you're not looking
The view from the top connects everything you've seen today. On a clear day you can see Reynisfjara and the Reynisdrangar sea stacks to the east, black sand stretching west, and Mýrdalsjökull glacier inland — the whole South Coast in one sweep.
This is one of the windiest points on the entire coast. The headland juts directly into the Atlantic with nothing to block it — dress for real wind, more than you'd expect from the temperature alone.
The lighthouse has been guiding ships since 1927, standing at the highest point of the promontory — worth the short walk up even beyond the arch itself.
Fun Trivia
Things most visitors don't know
The arch is genuinely large enough for real vessels — not just a photogenic gap in the rock, but a functional passage boats have actually used in calm weather.
The two sides of the promontory tell two different volcanic stories — one formed underwater, one formed by lava meeting glacier — fused together into what now looks like a single seamless headland.