Mountain · Iceland
Hvannadalshnúkur
Hvannadalshnúkur is the highest point of Iceland, a peak of rock and ice on the rim of the summit crater of the Öræfajökull volcano. Vatnajökull National Park surrounds it.
Picture credit: Gummao (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Kristinnstef (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Hvannadalshnúkur?
Hvannadalshnúkur is part of the Öræfajökull volcano, Vatnajökull ice cap.
You will find it in: Iceland.
Summit: 64.016° N, 16.675° W
The story behind it
Öræfajökull means wasteland glacier, a name the district was given after the enormous eruption of 1362, after which more than forty years passed before farmers came back. The volcano's summit crater is about three by four kilometres across and completely filled with ice, and Hvannadalshnúkur is the highest bump on its northwestern rim. From the flat coastal plain it looks like a white pyramid. For a long time maps gave its height as 2 119 metres, but a careful survey in August 2005 came out at 2 109.6 metres, and since then Iceland's high point is usually written as 2 110 metres. The first recorded ascent was on 17 August 1891, when the British traveller Frederick W. W. Howell was guided up by two Icelanders, Páll Jónsson and Þorlákur Þorláksson. Öræfajökull erupted again in 1727 and 1728 and has been quiet since, although instruments picked up restless tremors in 2017 and 2018. Everything around the peak belongs to Vatnajökull National Park, named after the huge ice cap that the mountain leans against.
Find it on the globe
Hvannadalshnúkur is there as a small peak with its own shape — a horn, a ridge, a volcano — standing on the surface. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
How high is Hvannadalshnúkur?
2 110 metres, the highest point in Iceland. Older maps said 2 119 metres, until a survey in 2005 measured 2 109.6 metres.
Where is Hvannadalshnúkur?
In southeast Iceland, on the Öræfajökull volcano at the southern edge of the Vatnajökull ice cap, inside Vatnajökull National Park.
Is Hvannadalshnúkur itself a volcano?
It is not a separate volcano but the highest point on the crater rim of Öræfajökull, which last erupted in 1727 and 1728.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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