Vök Baths: Floating Pools on Lake Urriðavatn

The floating pools

The name comes from the Icelandic word vök, the patch of open water in a frozen lake. Locals noticed for generations that one part of Urriðavatn never froze, which is how the hot springs under it were found in the first place.

Two hexagonal pools now sit on decking that floats over those springs, connected to the shore by a walkway, and they run at 39 to 41°C. Two more pools sit on the bank at 37 to 38°C. Nothing is deeper than 1.2 m, so this is a place to sit rather than to swim.

The floating pools are the reason to come. Sitting in 40°C water with a lake at eye level and the East Iceland countryside flat around you is a different experience from a walled pool, and it is one of the few Icelandic spas where the surroundings are gentle rather than dramatic.

The water you can drink

Boreholes a few hundred metres from the site draw water from 1,000 to 2,000 m down. It surfaces at about 75°C and is cooled on the way into the pools. What makes it unusual is its purity: it carries almost none of the sulphur that gives Icelandic hot water its reputation, and it is certified as drinking water.

So the tea bar in the middle of the pool serves infusions brewed with the same water you are sitting in. That sounds like a marketing line until you notice that nothing smells of sulphur, including your hair afterwards.

Sauna, cold tunnel and the bar

The steam sauna runs at around 50°C, which is mild by Nordic standards and built for sitting rather than enduring. Outside it, a cold mist tunnel sprays at about 10°C, and the sequence of hot pool, sauna, cold mist and back is what most people end up doing two or three times over.

There is a bar you swim up to, serving beer, wine and soft drinks, and a tea bar included in the ticket. The Vök Bistro upstairs cooks with East Iceland produce and looks out over the lake; it is a proper restaurant rather than a pool café, and it is the only food anywhere near the site.

Getting there

Vök sits on Lake Urriðavatn about 5 km north of Egilsstaðir, five minutes by car. From the Seyðisfjörður cruise pier it is 32.6 km and around 32 minutes, over the Fjarðarheiði pass at 600 m and down the other side.

There is no bus. Off a ship, that means either a guided trip that includes it or a taxi arranged in advance, and taxis in this part of Iceland are scarce enough that the guided trip is usually the only practical option. Two trips from the pier include admission, and a third, the private jeep, offers it as an add-on chosen at checkout.

How Icelandic pools work

The rule that surprises visitors: you shower naked, with soap, in the changing rooms before you go anywhere near the water. Attendants enforce it, the shower areas are communal, and nobody is looking at you. Icelandic pools use very little chlorine and this is why they can.

Beyond that it is straightforward. Changing rooms have lockers and a wristband, and the wristband also runs your tab at the bar so you are not carrying a card into the water.

How long to stay

Most people spend between 90 minutes and three hours. Ninety minutes covers the floating pools, the sauna and one round of the mist tunnel without rushing. Three hours means you are eating at the bistro or you have found the tea bar agreeable.

The guided trips from Seyðisfjörður allow about 90 minutes, which is judged well. On a self-driven day, going late is the better call: summer opening runs to 23:00 and the light at ten in the evening in June is worth staying for.

What to bring

The rental prices make this worth reading.

• A swimsuit and a towel, unless you want to pay 1,390 ISK for each at the desk
• Flip-flops for the walkway, which is wooden and cold underfoot
• A hair tie: the water is soft and drinkable but it is still water
• A card, since the wristband tab settles at the exit
• Nothing else. Lockers, soap and showers are provided

Who should think twice

Hot water at 40°C lowers blood pressure by widening the blood vessels, which is pleasant for most people and not for everyone. If you are on blood-pressure medication, pregnant, or have a heart condition, the standing advice at Icelandic pools is short sessions, plenty of drinking water, and getting out slowly rather than standing up fast.

The cold mist tunnel is the opposite shock and is best skipped if any of the above applies. Alcohol from the swim-up bar and long sits in 41°C water is also a combination worth being sensible about.

How it compares to the famous ones

People arrive expecting the Blue Lagoon and get something quieter. Vök is smaller, cheaper, rarely crowded, and it does not have the milky silica water that makes the southwest lagoons photograph the way they do. What it has instead is a real lake, a view without a fence and, in the shoulder season, whole hours where you might have a floating pool to yourself.

Against Mývatn Nature Baths, four hours north, the case is similar: Mývatn is bigger and more dramatic, Vök is closer to everything in the east and the only geothermal spa within reach of a Seyðisfjörður port call.

Eating at the bistro

Vök Bistro sits above the changing rooms with a wall of glass onto the lake, and it is a restaurant rather than a pool kiosk. The kitchen leans on East Iceland produce, which in practice means lamb, arctic char and vegetables grown under the region's own geothermal heat.

It is also the only food within about 5 km. If you are driving yourself and arriving late, book a table rather than assume; in July the place fills with people who came for an hour and stayed for four. On a guided trip the timing rarely allows more than a drink at the in-water bar.

Going in winter

Winter hours run 12:00 to 22:00 from November to March, which sounds short until you remember that the sun in Egilsstaðir barely clears the hills in December. Sitting in 40°C water in the dark with steam coming off the lake is the version of this place most Icelanders would choose.

It is also the aurora option. The site faces north over open water with no streetlights behind it, and on a clear night between September and March the lights come up over the far shore. Nothing is guaranteed and the staff will tell you so, but the geometry is right in a way that a walled town pool never is.

None of this is reachable from a cruise ship. The season at the coast ends in September and the pass above Seyðisfjörður closes in storms.

What else is within half an hour

Egilsstaðir, founded in 1947, is the hub of the east and everything below sits within a short drive of it. If you have a car and a day rather than a port call, Vök pairs with any of them.

• Hengifoss, the third highest waterfall in Iceland at 128 m, with red clay bands striped through the black basalt of the cliff. About 5 km round trip on foot and 40 to 60 minutes each way
• Hallormsstaðaskógur, the largest forest in the country, with 85 tree species collected from around the world and marked walking trails through it
• Lake Lagarfljót itself, which folklore says holds a serpent, the Lagarfljótsormurinn, first recorded in the annals in 1345
• Stuðlagil Canyon, about an hour further up the valley on road 923
• The East Iceland Heritage Museum in Egilsstaðir, which is the wet-afternoon option

With children

Children aged 6 to 15 pay 3,590 ISK and under-6s come free. Nothing is deeper than 1.2 m and the onshore pools at 37 to 38°C are the sensible place for small children, since 41°C is too hot for them to sit in for long.

There is no slide, no wave machine and nothing designed to entertain. Teenagers tend to like the cold mist tunnel and the walk out to the floating pools; younger children get bored inside an hour. Plan around that rather than against it.

How busy it gets

Far less than the southwest lagoons, and the pattern is predictable. Coach groups off the ships at Seyðisfjörður arrive in the early afternoon in the cruise months, and independent travellers pile in between four and seven in the evening in July and August.

The quiet hours are the first two after opening and the last two before close. In May or September you can have a floating pool to yourself for stretches. Booking ahead is worth it in high summer and unnecessary the rest of the year.

The cheaper alternative nobody mentions

Every Icelandic town of any size runs a municipal swimming pool, heated geothermally, open early and late, and priced for people who use it three times a week rather than once in a lifetime. Egilsstaðir has one, five minutes from Vök in the other direction.

It has hot tubs, a proper lane pool and a fraction of the admission price. What it does not have is a pool floating on a lake, a sauna with a view or a bar you swim up to. If what you want is to be warm in water at the end of a long drive, the town pool does that for a few hundred krónur. If you want the thing that is only here, that is Vök.

Saying so costs us nothing, and a page that pretended the 7,690 ISK ticket was the only option in Egilsstaðir would be worth less to you.

Building a day around it

Two shapes work, depending on whether you arrived by ship or by car.

• Off a cruise ship: the baths only come with a canyon trip, either the $407 hike or the $325 rim run. Both allow about 90 minutes in the water at the end of the day, which is the right way round
• By car in summer: Stuðlagil in the morning while the light is on the columns, lunch in Egilsstaðir, Hengifoss in the afternoon, then Vök from six until it closes at eleven
• By car in winter: Vök in the dark with the aurora forecast open, since the daylight hours are too short to spend indoors
• Half a day only: Vök and the Hallormsstaður forest, which are twenty minutes apart and make an easy afternoon

What the site is like

Low buildings with turf on the roofs sit at the water's edge, and the whole thing is built to disappear into a flat, pale landscape rather than announce itself. From the car park you see almost nothing; the pools only appear once you are through the changing rooms and out on the decking.

The lake does the work. Urriðavatn is shallow and wide with low hills behind it, and in the evening the water goes completely still. There is no cliff, no lava field, no steam plume from a power station. For a country that usually sells drama, Vök is unusually quiet, and the people who like it least are the ones who wanted another Blue Lagoon.