Heiðmörk

This guide to Heiðmörk in Reykjavik starts at Rauðhólar, a cluster of roughly eighty pseudocraters formed when lava met wet ground and flashed into steam, and traces how Second World War engineers quarried them for airport gravel until officials finally protected the site in 1961. It also follows the surrounding heath, set aside as a conservation area in 1950 after centuries of grazing had stripped it bare, and the Reykjavík Forestry Association volunteers who began planting saplings into frozen ground the following spring. You'll hear how millions of trees later, birch and spruce now stand where there was only wind-scoured heath. Look north for the low red hills of Rauðhólar rising out of the pines.