Dettifoss waterfall amazingly awesome. It’s no wonder that Ridley Scott chose it to be in the opening scene of the Prometheus movie (2012), which is the first time I saw it and immediately decided that I need to see it.

The waterfall is situated in the north of the island in the Vatnajokull National Park and is considered the largest and most powerful of Europe’s waterfalls, having a maximum debit of 500 square meters of water per second (imagine that!), and it’s 45 meters wide and the water freefalls 100 meters down.

You can drive all the way up to the parking lot on whichever side of the river you find yourself on and take a short 15 minute walk on a moonscape path. In fact, from the parking lot you can’t even tell that you are near a waterfall, however, once you get close to it and climb down a few flights of stairs you can see it’s greatness and hear its roar.

Many things will make you feel small in this world, but nothing quite like standing face to face with Dettifoss. It’s truly a humbling experience.

The visiting area is well delimited, in order to avoid tourists slipping on the wet grass and falling down the cold canyon drilled by the water in the rock.

A 10 minute walk upstream takes you to a few other smaller, but also beautiful waterfalls.

If you’re into hiking, a 34 kilometer route can take you all the way up to Asbyrgi, the elf capital city.

How to get to Dettifoss waterfall

From the Ring Road take road 864, direction Hólsfjallavegur and eventually take a left to Dettifoss Parking East.