Gamla Laugin Reykir

Gamla Laugin (Old Pool) at Grettislaug in Skagafjordur, North Iceland, is a historic natural geothermal bathing site on the Skalanes Peninsula on the shores of Skagafjordur where, according to the thirteenth-century Grettis Saga, the legendary Icelandic outlaw Grettir the Strong swam ashore from the island of Drangey and bathed in these natural hot springs — making this one of the few surviving geothermal bathing sites with a specific literary connection to the medieval Norse sagas that form Iceland's foundational literary heritage. The bicarbonate-rich geothermal waters here fill two natural stone-edged pools with views across the fjord to the dramatic island of Drangey where Grettir spent his final years as an outlaw, creating an extraordinary sense of historical continuity in a landscape unchanged since the age of the Vikings. Bathing at Grettislaug connects visitors to over 700 years of Icelandic thermal bathing tradition recorded in literary history, in one of the country's most remote and historically evocative geothermal settings.