← All articles · Iceland · 18 March 2013

Silfra, Iceland: Snorkelling the gap between two continents

Dry suits, glacial meltwater and a rift you can float straight down the middle of: snorkelling Silfra in Thingvellir, where two tectonic plates pull apart.

Silfra is a fissure in Thingvellir National Park where the North American and Eurasian plates are slowly pulling apart, and the gap between them has filled with glacial meltwater. You can snorkel it. In March, in Iceland, with snow still lying on the rock, that sounds like a terrible idea right up until you put your face in the water.

Getting into a dry suit

The morning starts in a gravel car park with a lot of zips. Dry suits go on over your own layers, then the neck seal, then the hood, then the gloves, and by the end you're standing about like a very pleased Michelin man in the middle of a lava field.

Inga and Dileep standing on a gravel road at Thingvellir in black dry suits, snow patches and blue sky behind them — Suited and sealed, on the road above the fissure. Neither of us could put our arms all the way down.

Dileep and another snorkeller in dry suits by the vehicles, with the low rocky cliffs of Thingvellir behind — Last checks by the vans. That low wall of rock in the background is the edge of the rift.

The fissure from above

Then you walk to the entry point and see what you've signed up for. It's a narrow channel of completely still water running between two banks of broken, moss-covered rock, with snow on the ledges and the white shoulders of the mountains lined up at the far end.

The still, dark water of the Silfra fissure running between snow-dusted rocky banks, with snow-covered mountains on the horizon — The channel from the top of the steps. Not a ripple on it, which is somehow more intimidating.

Dileep in a hood, mask and snorkel standing on the metal entry platform at Silfra while other snorkellers wait behind him — Masks on, queueing on the metal platform. The water below the handrail is already that impossible green.

Inga in a red and black dry suit with hood, mask and yellow snorkel, holding the handrail above the Silfra fissure — Inga, fully committed, with the fissure and the mountains stretching out behind.

In you go

You go down the steps backwards and let the suit float you. The cold reaches the small strip of face the hood doesn't cover, your lips go numb, and then you look down and stop caring, because you can see the bottom as clearly as if there were no water there at all.

Looking down from the platform at a group of snorkellers entering the clear turquoise water of Silfra between rock walls — The group heading off downstream, seen from the top of the steps.

Two snorkellers in dry suits floating beside the entry steps at Silfra, with submerged rocks visible through green-blue water — Waiting for the rest of the group. Every rock on the bottom is in focus, and that's before you've put your mask under.

Between the plates

Under the surface it stops being a swim and becomes something closer to flying. The walls drop away on both sides in slabs and boulders, the light comes down in shafts, and the crack in the middle just keeps going, blue into darker blue, further than you can follow it.

Underwater view of the Silfra fissure, rock walls on both sides with snorkellers silhouetted in fins at the surface above — Fins at the ceiling, rock walls either side. The visibility here is the whole point.

Underwater shot looking along the narrow Silfra crack as it drops into deep blue, one snorkeller finning above — Looking down the crack. The blue keeps going long after your nerve stops.

Line of snorkellers floating along the mirrored surface of the water at Silfra, seen from below between two rock walls — The whole line of us drifting along the underside of the surface, which turns into a mirror when you look up.

Snorkellers gliding over a pale gravel and rock bottom in bright shallow water at the end of the Silfra fissure — The shallow end, where the fissure opens out and the water turns the colour of a swimming pool.

You get out at the far end, walk back in your fins looking ridiculous, and then can't stop talking about it for the rest of the day. If you're doing the same loop we did, pair it with Geysir up the road, the Blue Lagoon for the warm version of getting wet in Iceland, and a couple of nights in Reykjavik.