I Am A Polar Bear

Imagine the shock I got on Monday night, lounging in the bath after walking a mile uphill from Rangers to be greeted on Instagram by an announcement from an unknown Earth Lagoon in Iceland. A new lagoon? How did I not know it was coming? The mystery was quickly solved: after 21 years in business, Mývatn Nature Baths is rebranding. Actually, it’s not even such a huge change. Its name in Icelandic is Jarðböðin, which means Earth Baths, so it’s just bringing its two names together.

But what it’s also doing is showing a desire for uniformity, to fit in with the other lagoons around the country. It has three obvious competitors. It’s basically a copy of the Blue Lagoon, albeit one about as far away as it’s possible to get. Both are large milky opaque white-blue lagoons fed by nearby power plants but where the Blue Lagoon sits right by the only real international airport in Iceland and you need to take out an extra mortgage to afford a visit, the Earth Lagoon is on the side of a volcano by a lake on the edge of a lava field so hostile it’s named the Desert of Misdeeds, it’s smaller, wilder, less crowded and cheaper. I tend to describe it as “everything the Blue Lagoon does but better”.

An little over an hour to the west is the Forest Lagoon, opened in 2022 just outside Akureyri, Iceland’s second biggest city. This one is a direct competitor, especially for cruise tourists. It’s very sleek and modern, set on the side of the hill on the opposite side of the narrow fjord, among birch and fir trees. Try not to think about how much forest had to come out to pop the Forest Lagoon in. My major criticism of the Forest Lagoon is that it’s too small, especially if it wants to be the Blue Lagoon of the North but less than two weeks ago, it opened an extension which looks like it pretty much doubles the size of the pool. With that name change, the Earth Lagoon is making it pretty clear it’s setting out to actively challenge the Forest Lagoon.

Third is Geosea, an hour or so north of Mývatn at Husavík, the self-proclaimed whale watching capital of Iceland. Mývatn is a major stop in the north and I tend to take at least two nights there if I find myself in the region but it’s a couple of villages in the middle of nowhere by a midgy lake surrounded by volcanic glory whereas Husavík is a town, if a small one, with all the infrastructure of a town and busy attracting tourists as the gateway to the Diamond Circle. Geosea is another recent addition to the lagoon roster, having opened in 2018 and its USP is that it’s a couple of infinity pools on a clifftop overlooking a fjord. Again, it’s sleek and modern and beautiful and I am biased against it simply because I went on the hottest, sunniest evening Iceland has ever had and there was nowhere to hide from the burning sun.

So here we have it. For fourteen years, Earth Lagoon’s only competition was in the opposite corner of the country. Now it’s got two very new and very different lagoons practically on its doorstep. And even as a fan, I can’t deny that it’s starting to look its age. It still doesn’t have an electronic wristband system, so you lock the lockers in the decidedly-rustic changing rooms with a key on an elastic band and if you want a drink in the water, you either have to pre-order at reception to have it delivered to you or you need to take a method of payment into the water with you. It’s just small things but it’s small things that make a big difference when you’re fighting for your place among ten geothermal wonders.

It becomes clearer every time I visit that the visitor numbers are outgrowing the changing rooms and that it’s not quite keeping up with the other lagoons. I thought they had that well in hand with the extension they’ve been building for more than two years. In the summer of 2023, I was assured the new Lagoon would open in 2024. Go back in 2025 and there’s no sign from the public side of any major advances and it’s now due to open in 2026. This time it’s going to close for a few months during the winter, so I have a little more faith in the new date. I knew there was a new service building coming and a bigger pool but the rebranding is a surprise. Earth Lagoon. Well, it does fit nicely with the Blue, Secret, Sky and Forest Lagoons, it fits the existing Icelandic name and it fits the location on the slopes of the volcano, but it also feels like Sandy in the black leggings at the end of Grease, like it’s betrayed itself to earn the approval of tourists playing the role of Danny Zuko. Even its new website now has a very strong resemblance to several of the others, Sky Lagoon in particular, with the beige background and the rounded boxes everywhere. The individuality is rapidly leaking away.

But the Earth Lagoon isn’t the only one to make big changes to keep up with the younger pools . The Blue Lagoon itself, the mother and father of all geothermal pools in Iceland, had a big extension in 2018, which provided a couple of hotels and the more exclusive Retreat Lagoon for the tourists willing to drop two or three months’ salary on a private lagoon away from the hoi-polloi. Then, earlier this year, it had a new sauna and steam room, which I lay firmly at the feet of its own young upstart competitor, 2021’s Sky Lagoon, just 15 minutes from downtown Reykjavík and with a huge west-facing window on its sauna. So of course, the Blue Lagoon needed a new sauna with a big window. And to be fair, it did. The old sauna was a dark hobbit house complete with round door. Wonderfully atmospheric but didn’t at all fit the aesthetic of the country’s premiere tourist attraction. And the steam room had a more clinical feeling than a relaxing one, so the new steam cave is definitely more in keeping with the rest of the lagoon.

Even the Sky Lagoon, at well under four years old and successfully pushing at the Blue Lagoon if it’s not quite beating it yet, expanded and upgraded the turf house where it keeps its sauna, steam room, mist bath and body scrub – yes, I’m still livid that you only get to use them once and they sell that restriction to you as a feature in the form of a decadent Ritual. At least it’s now included in all packages – you used to have to upgrade from the basic entrance just to use facilities any local swimming pool in any tiny village would include. The Forest Lagoon recently had an extension, as I’ve already said, which is less about keeping up with the Joneses and more about realising it’s more popular than it can cope with.

But the other lagoon to make a major Grease-worthy change is Laugarvatn Fontana, and I was debating giving that its own blog post, so here it is. Fontana opened in 2011, the third of three tourist-oriented geothermal experiences for six years until Krauma opened in 2017. Yes, the Secret Lagoon opened to the public in 2014 but it only really became part of the lagoon landscape in the post-pandemic boom. Before that, no one was debating Blue Lagoon vs Secret Lagoon, they just weren’t in the same sphere. Fontana took a very different approach to the Blue and Earth Lagoons – a more European health spa vibe, with a turf-roofed eco building and three pools with sharp angles, white tiles, black stone sculptural art in the water and crystal clear water. It didn’t quite fit with its very earthy and natural USP of the hot spring being right on the lakeside and natural vents directly feeding the rustic wooden steam rooms. In the summer of 2013, they added a more natural black lava pool, not a tile in sight but they’ve never given it a name and it’s never included when they talk about their pools, which makes me occasionally wonder if they’ve noticed it exists. I’m sure Fontana rattled along just fine for its first decade but the landscape has changed since then.

Over the years, and especially since joining an Iceland travel advice Facebook group, I’ve come to realise that Fontana is losing the lagoon game quite badly. Tourist have always and will always flock to the Blue Lagoon but some of them are starting to look for something a bit different, a bit more unique or quiet and the Sky Lagoon and Hvammsvík, on the west coast, are winning by a mile, with a minority in favour of the budget, authentic-feeling option of the Secret Lagoon. Fontana is being left behind and it’s only going to get worse when (if!) Laugarás Lagoon opens, less than ten miles away. I’m very interested in that – it was due to open in August, a week after I left, and is now claiming to be opening next week. We’ll see. It’s going to be very much in the same mould as the Sky Lagoon, I reckon – very sleek, very modern, very beautiful, with a turf house and an infinity edge and once it opens and tourists get used to its existence, I think it’s going to become the big lagoon in the Golden Circle region.

But Fontana isn’t taking it lying down. It’s about to close for renovations even more massive than the Earth Lagoon’s. It’s already got an extension to the building in progress, which will house bigger, better changing facilities, new relaxing spaces and new steam rooms. But then it’s going to close altogether while the current pools are ripped out and new, more natural, ripple-shaped ones built. The length of the pool area will almost double, there will be new direct access to the lake, an in-water bar and there will be a new sauna with – you’ve guessed it – a massive window overlooking pool and lake. I will miss the old one; I’m very fond of Fontana, but I’m also very interested to see the new version, and to see how it’s received by tourists. The pictures look a lot more organic, a lot more sleek – a lot more what tourists want, and competition to Laugarás Lagoon. And will it come with a rebrand and a new name? I’d never considered it but I’m considering it now. Would it look even more like jumping on the bandwagon than it already does? Would anyone else really notice or care except me? Probably not. Well, my money’s on Fountain Lagoon if it does.

So there are a lot of changes on the lagoon circuit. I’m not going to Iceland next summer – with the eclipses, it’ll be even more rammed with tourists than it normally is but I might take a spring or autumn trip just to visit all the new and transformed pools. And there’s still plenty of room for more – someone with a bit of business sense needs to build one on the South Coast, between Selfoss and Vík, and judging by the rate at which tourists are recommending Snæfellsnes to each other, that’s going to become prime lagoon land soon too.