Your average tourist to Iceland will be completely oblivious to Borgarnes, even the ones who pass through it – and maybe stop at its roadhouse – on their long day trip to Snæfellsnes. But Borgarnes is a strong contender for my favourite place in Iceland.
It’s a small town on the west coast, the service centre for the region, the place where the inhabitants of the villages and hamlets come for anything that can’t be obtained at the shop attached to a single petrol pump beside a road that appears to be leading to nowhere. It’s where farmers bring their animals to market and to slaughter, where any industry happens, where the milk becomes skyr and where you have all the amenities of the big city. Except Borgarnes is home to less than two thousand souls, only a little bigger than my rural secondary school.
It has a couple of hotels, farmstays and B&Bs. Several cafes and restaurants. It has a campsite that I’ve never seen actually open. It has a sports centre and an outdoor pool with incredible views. It has two petrol stations, a roadhouse and at least two supermarkets. It has the best saga and Settlement museum in the country. It’s better appointed than my town of eleven thousand. But it doesn’t feel like a big city because it’s not a big city. 2000 people is a village over here.
I guess I must have first become acquainted with Borgarnes in 2013, when I did a Sagaland tour that included the Settlement Centre. Borgarnes is on a peninsula that sticks out into the side of the fjord named after it and the museum is pretty much right on the tip of the peninsula. You can stand outside while you’re waiting for the rest of the group and admire the views – the dusty pyramidal mountains to the south, with the Ring Road running along their feet, or you can look north to Snæfellsjökull, a perfect snow-capped cone-shaped volcano visible on the horizon if it’s not too hazy.
I first stayed there a year later, after some horrifying spinning got me out of my tent in a wet field and back to the nearest hotel, which happened to be the big one down near the end of that peninsula. I turned up at 8.30am, sodden, in distress, never even thinking that you can’t usually get into a room until mid-afternoon, and lay on the bed until the world stopped going round in circles. That evening, I discovered my love for Borgarnes. Along the shore is a little rocky headland and I scramble up it to watch the sun go down over the fjord, casting the dust mountains in a pinkish light. It’s peaceful. Very few tourists stay the night here.
If you’ve been to Iceland, you should have come across Egil’s Saga (that’s a non-Amazon affiliate link, by the way). Egil lived at the farm at the top of the peninsula, where the Ring Road goes off towards Snæfellsnes. Its name was Borg, hence Borgarnes: Borg’s Headland. Egil is, in his way, the Icelandic Hamlet. He was a farmer and a poet and a bit of a monster, a big man with a big temper and a big spite. They’ve still not found the gold he threw away shortly before his death. The streets in Borgarnes are named after the characters from the saga. The hotel where I stayed is on Egilsgata, the pool is on Þorsteinsgata, Thorstein being one of Egil’s sons, and best accessed from the main road via Skallagrímsgata, named after Egil’s father. The best of Iceland’s sagas lives and breathes in this town.
(Ok, Volsungs Saga is the best. But Egil’s is one of the big two and while Njal’s is indeed good, a lot of it is nitpicking legal drama which gets tedious.)
And so to the pool. I like to swim and this is my favourite pool in the country, no exceptions. It’s on the north side of the peninsula, where it runs nearly parallel to the mainland and instead of the usual wooden fence, it has a wire one on this side, so you can see the views from the water. I can swim while staring at Snæfellsjökull. Because this is Iceland the water is geothermally heated – it’s pleasantly warm to swim in but not hot enough for relaxing in. It’s got three sunken hotpots for that, each with its temperature inscribed on it. I prefer the one nearest the indoor pool door. The one closer to the slide pool is too hot and the one nearer the main door is too cool. There’s another pool inside – but why swim inside when there’s an outdoor heated pool with a view? When I got back from climbing Esja a week or so after the dizziness episode, I cooled off with ten lengths of the pool alternated with sitting in the hotpot and it was glorious, until I realised I basically hadn’t eaten anything all day.
If I can’t sell you Borgarnes on a great pool, fjordside sunsets and a small town that’s low on tourists, I’m not going to be able to sell you Borgarnes on a good roadhouse either. But it’s a good roadhouse. The N1 one has fuel at the side, a small supermarket and one of these large but casual restaurants, the sort of place where you get a pylsa – lamb hotdog – or a burger or the usual roadside quick snacks and a coffee with seating and tourism leaflets and clean toilets. I’ve not made it to the Olís on the other side of the road but it looks like more of the same – I guess the one you choose depends which one the hire car company gave you the fuel discount token for, unless you’re on a tour bus which 99% will likely pick the N1.
This little complex is where you’ll find most of Borgarnes’s services: the supermarkets, a bank, a pharmacy, post office, phone shop and of course the Vínbúðin – the state-operated alcohol retailer, currently only open 11am-6pm Monday to Thursday, until 7pm Fridays, 4pm Saturdays and closed altogether on Sundays.
Perhaps I can sell you on Borgarnes’s location. This little town is a great base for exploring the green parts of the west; for visiting Reykholt, former home of Egil’s descendant and biographer, Lawspeaker and author Snorri Sturluson; for visiting the waterfalls Hraunfossar and Barnafoss and striking out to Husafell; for visiting Deildartunguhver, Europe’s biggest hot spring and the new spa built almost on top of it; and for trips to Snæfellsnes that don’t need to include the extra hour or so from and to Reykjavik at each end of the day.
It’s just a really nice, really peaceful, really scenic little town and I love it a lot.