There’s not a lot of information to hand about the main sight at the next stop on our excursion from Grundarfjörður that had already seen us pay a visit to the Djúpalónssandur Black Sand Beach On The Snæfellsnes Peninsula. Only a short bus ride away from there was the Malarrif Lighthouse, and the primary reason for the stop appeared to be because there were some toilets that could be used which I initially thought was odd as there’d also been toilets at the beach, but then realised that we were on a cruise excursion and there’s no such thing as too many toilet stops for most passengers.
Malarrif Lighthouse is twenty metres high and was built in 1946 or 1947 (records differ), replacing an earlier construction on the site that had been erected in 1917. At the time this part of Iceland was some of the most remote farmland in the country and the lighthouse was a necessary guide for fishermen in and around the rocky coastline. If you’ve read the previous post about the beach you’ll know just how dangerous the waters are.
The striking thing about Malarrif Lighthouse for me was its rocketship design. The flared support fins and tapering design just brought visions of pulp comics from the middle of the twentieth century to the fore. Could you see Buck Rogers piloting this thing?
Housing for a lighthouse keeper and an information centre were also in the area, but the lighthouse wasn’t the only thing to rise up out of the ground and dominate the view. A large radio antenna obviously facilitated keeping in touch with the wider world.
In the distance we could also see Lóndrangar, a pair of volcanic plugs of basalt that could almost be mistaken for the ruins of some great abbey. In fact, they were part of a crater rim from an old eruption in Iceland. If you picture these two being part of a larger circle of rock cooled down from an explosion, then over time the softer soil and other parts of the rim eroding naturally and falling into the sea, you’ll get some sense of the force of nature involved in their formation.
And, of course, you can’t really be anywhere on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula without the looming sight of the Snæfellsjökull volcano somewhere.
If you were on the peninsula and touring Iceland on your own then this is actually a worthwhile place to stop, check out the information, check the lighthouse over more closely, and wander along to the Lóndrangar rock pillars, but on a cruise excursion, as mentioned, there wasn’t time to do anything other than use the toilets. We were told we wouldn’t get another chance to use toilets after this on the day’s tour so despite our occasional moaning about the frequency of loo stops we decided it would be prudent to make use of them too. A long wait in line commenced because it appeared that one of the two unisex cubicles was permanently occupied; at least until I got to the front of the queue and spotted that the door was clearly showing it was vacant and nobody had thought to check. People, eh?
In the next post in this 2022 Sky Princess Norway and Iceland cruise travelogue series we’ll make another short photo stop along the Snæfellsnes Peninsula at the old fishing village of Hellnar.