Laugarvatnshellir

Laugarvatnshellir is a pair of man-made caves near Lake Laugarvatn in southern Iceland. The caves were carved out of soft rock and for a long time served mainly as a shelter and barn for sheep, of which, according to tradition, several hundred could fit inside.

Who originally created the caves is not entirely clear, and there is even speculation that they might have been Irish monks, back before the Viking settlement of Iceland. According to some theories, the monks sailed to Iceland in leather boats as part of their religious journeys.

At the beginning of the 20th century, however, the caves became a real home for two Icelandic families. The first couple, Indriði Guðmundsson and Guðrún Kolbeinsdóttir, settled here in 1910 and lived here for eleven months. The second family, Jón Þorvarðarson and Vigdís Helgadóttir, lasted much longer and inhabited the caves from 1918 to 1922. Two of their three children were even born right here in the Laugarvatnshellir cave. In one part of the cave lived the sheep, and in the other the people. A simple air circulation system provided the people with at least basic warmth, which was generated by the sheep in the adjacent, lower chamber.

The way they obtained water was also interesting. It seeped through the soft rock, and at one spot where the water dripped down, the inhabitants collected it into containers. Thus they had a slow, but very reliable source of good drinking water.

Since we are in Iceland, it will certainly not surprise you that Laugarvatnshellir is also associated with a number of local legends about elves who were said to live in the caves. One of them tells of a shepherd whose sheep refused to enter the cave and who eventually succumbed to strange forces inside. These were said to have dragged him across the ground and ultimately forced him to leave, together with his sheep. Shortly afterward, a snowstorm lasting several days struck the area, during which he would probably have died in the cave.

The Laugarvatnshellir caves were restored in 2017 and opened to the public as a reminder of the unusual way of life in the Icelandic countryside at the beginning of the 20th century.