Photographing Kirkjufell: A Mountain That Never Repeats Itself

A Mountain That Never Repeats Itself

I've been back to Kirkjufell enough times now, across enough seasons, that I've stopped expecting to know what I'll get before I get there. That's unusual. Most locations, once you've shot them a couple of times, start repeating themselves — you know the angle, you know the light, you're really just waiting for slightly better weather than last time. Kirkjufell doesn't do that. Every visit has produced something genuinely different, and looking back through the results side by side, it's hard to believe they're all the same mountain and the same waterfall.

Winter: Alone With The Mountain

Winter is when Kirkjufell feels most like its own place rather than a stop on someone's itinerary. The crowds that fill the slope in summer are simply gone — there's almost no one there, which means you're not worried about wrecking someone else's frame, and no one's worried about wrecking yours. You can walk the whole slope by the waterfall at your own pace, try angles that would be impossible to hold for more than a few seconds in high season, and just stand there for as long as the cold allows. The best winter nights are the ones where the aurora actually shows up over the mountain — that combination is what makes the location, more than the mountain or the lights on their own. Down near the water, there's a small recessed niche in the rock that I've found works particularly well if you're shooting with an ultra-wide lens; it lets you get low and close to the water while still holding the whole mountain in frame behind it. The one real hazard down there is the snow itself — it builds up deep along the slope and right at the water's edge, and it's easy to misjudge where solid ground ends, so it's worth moving carefully rather than confidently.

Summer: Crowded At Sunset, Empty By Midnight

Summer is a completely different kind of visit, and not just because of the color. Iceland's white nights mean there's effectively no real darkness for weeks around the solstice, so shooting isn't limited to a narrow window — it's possible around the clock if you're willing to stay up for it. What that does to Kirkjufell specifically is create two very different crowds within the same 24 hours. At sunset, the slope in front of the waterfall and the small bridge just above it are genuinely packed — mostly other photographers, tripods lined up shoulder to shoulder waiting for the light. It's worth being there for that anyway, because the color is real. But once twilight actually sets in and holds — which in June can mean the hours well past what would be sunset anywhere else — almost everyone leaves. From then until sunrise, the place empties out again, and you're effectively back to a winter-quiet mountain, just lit completely differently. One practical note for anyone planning a summer trip: Grundarfjörður, the town nearest Kirkjufell, is small, and there's really only one hotel — which tends to be fully booked well in advance during the white-nights season. A student hostel in the area is usually a better option regardless: three nights there can cost less than a single night at the hotel, and for a short photography trip, that's a meaningfully better use of the budget. Because it never actually gets dark, summer is also the season to use for exploring beyond the one famous view. There are other locations scattered around the peninsula that are easy to reach and shoot through the night when there's no rush to beat a sunset — the kind of driving-and-shooting trip that simply isn't possible anywhere the nights are properly dark.

Why This One Mountain

Kirkjufell isn't a volcano, despite the shape suggesting one — geologically it's a nunatak, a peak that stood above the surrounding ice sheets during the last glacial period while the softer rock around it was worn away, leaving the mountain's distinctive layered profile standing largely alone above the fjord. It rises about 463 meters above Grundarfjörður on the Snæfellsnes Peninsula, and it carries its own layer of folklore — local stories of trolls and wizards tied to its shape — long before television ever found it. More recently it picked up a second identity as "Arrowhead Mountain" in Game of Thrones, which is part of why so many people now recognize the silhouette even if they've never been anywhere near Iceland. None of that background is really why I keep going back, though. It's the fact that the mountain and the waterfall in front of it behave like a genuinely different subject depending on season, weather, and time of day — which is a rare thing to be able to say about a location this well photographed already.

Two pieces from this location are part of the Iceland collection: "Fairy Tale," shot from that winter alcove by the water, and "North Aurora," from a night the lights actually cooperated. Every print is made to order and personally signed, on archival Fujiflex paper or as a Lumachrome TruLife acrylic face-mount, starting at $900. For more on materials, sizing, and how prints are made, see the collector's guide.