Nauthólsvík Geothermal Beach
Lagoon of piped hot water meeting the cold Atlantic behind a low seawall, on imported golden sand.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Nauthólsvík Geothermal Beach in Reykjavik starts with the seam under your own feet, where two steps toward the sea wall trade bathwater warmth for a cold Atlantic swell. It explains how that heat is simply the city's ordinary municipal hot water, piped in and let loose into the bay behind a low seawall built to pen it into a shallow lagoon. Along the way it reaches back to a farm called Nautholl that stood on this shore until it burned around 1900, and to the wartime seaplanes that later used this same cove on convoy patrol over the North Atlantic.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Blue Lagoon
Milky-blue geothermal lagoon in a black lava field, fed by power-plant runoff rich in silica and minerals.
Sundhöllin
Geothermal-heated public pool from nineteen thirty-seven, one of the city's first buildings to run on piped hot springs.
Kvika Footbath
Circular geothermal footbath carved from stone, fed year-round by natural hot-spring boreholes on a windswept coastal path.
Sky Lagoon
Cliffside geothermal lagoon with a seven-step ritual moving between hot pools, cold plunge and sauna.
Laugardalslaug
Geothermal public bathing complex fed by ancient hot springs once used for washing laundry.
Vesturbæjarlaug
Neighborhood pool with spiral hot tubs modeled on a saga-age chieftain's medieval bathing pool.