For most of recorded Icelandic history, the Reykjanes Peninsula — the flat, mossy lava field between Keflavík Airport and Reykjavík that nearly every visitor crosses within an hour of landing — was the volcanically quiet part of a very unquiet country. Then, on the evening of March 19, 2021, a fissure opened in a valley called Geldingadalir, and the peninsula hasn't really settled down since.
What began as a slow, photogenic curiosity — tourists hiking out at sunset to watch lava fountain from a safe distance — has become one of Iceland's most consequential natural events in a generation: a fishing town evacuated and largely bought out by the state, and a volcanic system geologists now expect to keep erupting on and off for decades. If you're planning a trip and have seen a headline about lava near Reykjavík, here's what's actually happening, and whether it changes anything about your itinerary.
Eight centuries of silence, broken in an evening
Reykjanes hadn't produced an eruption since roughly the 13th century — a dormancy long enough that Icelandic geologists generally didn't expect to see it end in their working lifetimes. The 2021 Fagradalsfjall eruption changed that. It was, by volcanic standards, a gentle one: slow-moving lava, no explosive ash cloud, and a hiking trail close enough that it became a genuine tourist attraction in its own right, drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors over roughly six months before it stopped that September. It felt, at the time, like a one-off spectacle.
It wasn't. Fagradalsfjall erupted again, more briefly, in August 2022, and again at a new vent called Litli-Hrútur in July 2023. Each eruption was a little closer to the volcanic system that sits under Svartsengi and Grindavík — a fishing town of roughly 3,800 people on the peninsula's south coast. In November 2023, seismologists watched a wall of magma tunnel directly beneath the town itself, and on the night of the 10th, Grindavík was evacuated with a few hours' notice. It has not really been lived in since.
A new crater row, and a new normal
Since December 2023, the eruptions have come from the Sundhnúkur crater row, a fissure system just north of Grindavík, in a repeating pattern: weeks or months of magma accumulating underground, measurable as the land itself slowly rising, followed by a rapid-onset eruption lasting anywhere from a few days to several weeks. By the most recent event — which ran from mid-July to early August 2025 — it was the ninth eruption in that system since the cycle began. Monitoring data from the Icelandic Meteorological Office showed magma continuing to accumulate beneath Svartsengi well into 2026, and scientists studying the system now describe it as a new volcanic episode that could continue, on and off, for years or even decades — not a single crisis with an end date, but a new geological normal for this part of the peninsula.
That reframing matters. Reykjanes isn't “erupting” in the sense of one continuous event; it's a system that goes quiet for months, then produces a fast, usually short-lived eruption, then goes quiet again. Live activity updates track exactly where things stand at any given moment, which is a more useful thing to check before a trip than any single news article — including this one.
What happened to Grindavík
The human cost has been real and specific. Lava has crossed into the edge of town more than once, cracks opened in streets and building foundations from the underlying ground deformation, and the Icelandic government ultimately created Þórkatla, a state-chartered company, to buy homeowners out of properties they could no longer safely live in or insure. Iceland Review's reporting on the buyout put the program at more than 950 residences — over 90% of the town's housing stock — for a combined cost north of 70 billion krónur. Grindavík today is, by most accounts, still largely uninhabited; a small number of residents have returned or never fully left, but the town's longer-term future is genuinely undecided, tied to how the eruption cycle behaves over the next several years.
Does this affect your trip?
For the overwhelming majority of visitors, no. Keflavík International Airport, roughly 20 km from the active fissures, has continued operating normally throughout the entire episode. The Ring Road and the standard Golden Circle and South Coast routes don't pass anywhere near the eruption sites. Reykjavík, about 50 km from Grindavík, has seen no direct impact beyond the occasional distant glow on the horizon during an active eruption and, rarely, a period of poor air quality from volcanic gas when the wind blows the wrong way.
The one attraction that has genuinely been affected is the Blue Lagoon, which sits inside the same Svartsengi geothermal system and has been temporarily closed several times during active eruptions or periods of highest risk, then reopened once the immediate threat passed. If a visit there is part of your plans, check their own status page close to your travel dates rather than assuming either way. The stretch of road down to Grindavík itself has also been intermittently closed depending on conditions.
How to actually check before you go
Skip the outdated blog posts (including, eventually, this one) and go to the source. Safetravel.is, run by Iceland's search and rescue association, is the standing authority on road closures, hazard zones, and any active travel advisories. The Icelandic Met Office's aurora and volcano monitoring pages track current unrest, uplift measurements, and, when relevant, live eruption maps. Both are free, updated constantly, and written for exactly this situation — a five-minute check the week before you fly is genuinely more useful than anything else you'll read on the topic.
Worth seeing, if the timing lines up
None of this is only bad news for travelers. When an eruption is active and access is deemed safe, Icelandic tour operators run guided hikes and Super Jeep trips out to view fresh lava fields from a sanctioned distance — a genuinely rare thing to witness anywhere in the world, and one of the more memorable things a trip to Iceland can offer. Between eruptions, the cooled lava fields from 2021–2023 are themselves open for walking, still steaming in places, a stark black landscape that's a preview of what a huge share of Iceland looked like not that many thousand years ago. Just go through a licensed operator or an official viewing area, not on your own judgment about how close is close enough — the ground here has a documented habit of changing its mind.
Iceland calls itself the land of fire and ice as a matter of course, but Reykjanes over the last few years is a reminder that it isn't a slogan. This is some of the youngest land in Europe, still actively being made, and for the next few decades at least, that process is going to keep happening in full view.
Written by
Erika Sand
Erika has spent the last decade driving, hiking, and hot-spring-hopping across Iceland in every season. She writes NRF.is’s itineraries, guides, and trip reports to help travelers see the country safely, affordably, and without the tourist-trap detours.