Laugardalslaug

This guide to Laugardalslaug, Reykjavik's geothermal pool complex, opens with the sulfur-scented springs that gave the city its name, smoky bay, and the women who once knelt over these same scalding pools to scrub and boil their laundry. You'll hear from a seventeenth-century priest and a visiting archbishop who measured the water's heat, and how swimming lessons and Reykjavik's first stone pool grew out of ground long used for chores rather than bathing. Stand where generations once did their washing.