Get ready to experience Iceland’s largest cave! At 1500 Meters it is the largest and mightiest lava cave to explore in Iceland. You will learn all sorts of facts about Volcanoes, Lava tubes and how all these amazing formations were created. The guides are professional geologists and provided a lot of cool information on the volcano explosion, how lava cooled off and how this tubes were formed.
History of the Vidgelmir Cave
The Cave was formed 1100 years ago from explosive volcanoes in the area. The underground cave is 1.5 KM long and has some amazing lava formations. There is no discovery date of the cave. Late 13th century records show an entry about it when the property was sold and mention a cave. As per the guide, in 1974 this case was really discovered for what it is! A true Gem!.
The volcano that made this lave tube cave is 35 Kilometers away. Imagine how many more undiscovered lava caves and tubes there must be. From here we could see the other end of the cave which stretched 60 meters one way, and 1500 meter towards where we were headed.
About The Cave Vidgelmir tour
The Cave is located about 2 hours away from Reykjavik, in west Iceland. If you are in the Snaefellsnes area, make sure to plan this out. The path to get to the cave is uneven, however you can manage with you 2 wheel drive. One thing you find in Iceland is, the drives are long, but absolutely beautiful, with sheeps, horses, mountains and rivers all along the way, you will never got bored.
The owners of the cave have done an awesome job in creating a wooden path way through out most of the cave to make it safe for all ages. Cave tours run through out the day and can be booked on their website. Here is a link to their website: TheCave.is. The tour cost around $65.00 USD per person, which is surprisingly very affordable as apposed to any other excursion you might have researched in Iceland. The whole excursion takes about 1.5 hours.
A Helmet and a flash light is provided as part of the tour. I would highly recommend wearing warm clothes, gloves and a hat, it was freezing underground, and we went in the summer.
Through out the tour we stopped and the guide explained the different volcano formations and showed us samples for that area.
At the very deep end of the lava tube, they say its so dark that even if you stayed here for 20 years, your eyes would still not get used to it.
Inside the cave is always close to freezing. With water seeping through, there are very cool ice formations like the limestone stalagmites, similar to the ones we saw in Mexico. Check out that video here. Seeing ice formed like this.. Phenomenal! We were shown many different types of lava formations found through out the cave, my favorite were the cylinder ones.
Why we visited The Cave Vidgelmir?
Ever since we visited the Volcanoes in Big Island Hawaii, we knew we had to had to visit the land of Ice and Fire next. After reading up on few Lava Caves in Iceland, we found the mightiest one of all, The Cave.
The Cave is also knowns for The troll. Legend has it this is where the Trolls use to hide and where the Ghosts are. They also say an exorcist use to banish the ghost to these caves. Luckily did not encounter the ghosts nor the trolls.
We were blown away by the amazing lava formations. We had seen smaller lava tubes in Hawaii, but this was at a next level. There was so much history down there. There are few other lave tubes you can check out near Reykjavik, but nothing compares to the size and depth of this one.
What is the coolest cave you have explored? Leave a comment, we would love to visit and explore that next!