The Staircase
On the road down into Mjóifjörður the whole valley wall is a waterfall — a river coming off the plateau in stage after stage, each one landing in a pool and going over the next lip. You drive past it on the way to the wreck at the end of the fjord.
- Location
- Mjóifjörður, Iceland
- Visited
- SEP 2025
- Status
- Natural
The road into Mjóifjörður climbs over a pass and then drops, and this is what it drops past.
It isn’t one waterfall. The river comes off the top of the plateau and works its way down a wall of ledges, and every ledge gives it another fall — some a couple of metres, some fifteen, all of them landing in a shelf of green and going straight over the next edge. From the road you see six or seven at once stacked up the slope, and more above them disappearing into the cloud.
It was grey and drizzling and the cloud base was sitting about two thirds of the way up, which suited it. Nothing about this fjord was going to be sunny that day.
We were on our way down to the wartime wreck at the head of the water and I nearly drove past it. Stop.
- Region
- Iceland
- Nearest
- Mjóifjörður, Iceland
- Coordinates
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