FEBRUARY 2025 · ADVENTURE

Foss

South Coast · Iceland

Foss means waterfall. The south coast has dozens of them — the meltwater from Eyjafjallajökull and Mýrdalsjökull dropping off basalt escarpments directly to the coastal plain, sometimes to the sea. They are not hidden. They are simply there, enormous, spraying the ground for fifty metres in every direction.

Waterfall cascading through narrow rocky gorge with brown basalt cliffs — South coast gorge

— Behind the fall

Seljalandsfoss you can walk behind. The cliff is hollowed and the path goes around the fall, and from inside the recess the water is a curtain of white with grey sky beyond it. The basalt is dark and wet and the moss on the rock is the only other colour. You get completely wet. That's the arrangement.

Close enough that the lens needed wiping between frames.
South Iceland waterfalls — February 2025

Waterfall flowing into misty pool framed by volcanic cliffs and moss-covered rocks — Inside the recess, Seljalandsfoss

— Sixty metres

Skógafoss is wider — sixty metres — and the spray at the base is continuous, a permanent mist that makes the surrounding rocks and vegetation appear and disappear depending on wind. I shot from within it. Close enough that the viewfinder was difficult to use, close enough that the lens needed wiping between frames. A figure in a red jacket stands at the base and the waterfall above is white from edge to edge, the basalt cliffs on either side dark and streaked.

Waterfall with thick white curtain of water pouring from volcanic cliffs — Edge to edge, sixty metres

Hiker in red jacket stands before massive waterfall shrouded in spray — Within the spray

— The unnamed

Between the famous falls there are unnamed ones, reached by tracks across barren moorland. Fence posts leading toward a mountain. Brown earth, grey sky, the waterfall audible before it's visible. A gorge cuts the cliff — narrow, brown basalt walls, white water threading through it, a shot made through the spray where the rock emerges and disappears.