Djúpalónssandur Beach

Sitting on the tip of the wonderous Snæfellsnes Peninsula is the black pebble beach of Djúpalónssandur. Being Iceland you will not be disappointed by the other-worldly volcanic rock forms including one with a hole in the middle as you approach the beach. There is also a small lagoon set among the pebbles towards the back of the beach.

Djúpalónssandur has a history of settlement stretching back over a thousand years. For much of this time it was home to a fishing station, although these days it is uninhabited. One of the reminders that remain from these days are a series of are a series of four ancient lifting stones which would have been used to test if the local men were strong enough to go to sea. Each rock has a name and the smallest (Amlóði - Bungler) weighs a modest 23 kg. After this come Hálfdrættingur (Weak) and Hálfsterkur (Half-Strength) weighing 54 kg and 100 kg respectively. The largest stone, Fullsterkur (Full-Strength) weighs in at a whopping 154 kg. In the olden days if you couldn’t lift the third stone you were considered to weak to be a fisherman.

Also on the beach are the rusting metal remains of a British trawler which was shipwrecked here in 1948.