Kerid, Iceland's beautiful crater lake

On the south-western side of Iceland, perhaps some sixty odd miles from Reykjavik, and pretty close to Selfoss, you come across the Kerid crater. It is a caldera of a now-extinct cone-shaped volcano. At some point, once its magma was depleted, the cone collapsed onto the magma chamber, creating the crater. Its quite a colorful site, with the red earth. green moss, and turquoise green color of water.

We arrived there on a rainy day. The sky was cloudy, but the air was crisp. The cloudiness helped in bringing out the saturated colors of the landscape. The crater itself is made of red earth, with moss growing all over. The caldera is some 600 ft to 900 ft across, and some 200 ft deep. The water level in the lake is quite shallow, about 40 ft at the deepest. The water in the lake is primarily because of the water table, and not so much from ice melt, or rainwater.

We hiked down to the base of the crater. Most of the visitors just see it from the rim of the caldera. There were very few people down at the base, so it was nice to enjoy the scenery from down in the crater. There was even a bench there, to sit and enjoy, and to contemplate the beauty of it all.

We went back to Kerid in winter that year, on a very cold and rainy day. It was rather different from when we saw it in summer. It was more subdued, less inviting, and there were almost no one in sight.