Seljalandsfoss

About Seljalandsfoss — Iceland's Walk-Behind Waterfall

This is one of those places. It doesn’t matter what the weather is like or the time of day.  On this day, it was sleeting and everywhere we stepped was slippery. It doesn’t matter how many tour buses there are, or people snapping selfies. It doesn’t matter if the sunrise was spectacular; this day’s was subtle but not showy. 

All that matters is the thunder of the water, the curve of the cavern walls cradling the light of sunrise, and the mist that separates that world from where you are. 

My guess is just about everybody who visits Iceland visits Seljalandsfoss. And with good reason. You can walk the full 360 around and behind the waterfall. It’s powerful, loud in that transcendent everything-here-is-bigger-than-you way, and it’s beautiful. We arrived early on a gray, drizzling morning, with all the walkways coated in ice. That did not deter the tour buses. But that’s okay; as just another visitor, Iceland is a place you share. We waited for quite a while before the light broke through the clouds. Fire and ice. 

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Seljandadoss is now available for acquisition from our global printing partner Whitewall.

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Provenance: Hasselblad X1D II 50C | Hasselblad XCD 21mm

Seljalandsfoss
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Seljalandsfoss

Seljalandsfoss is the Icelandic waterfall you can walk behind — a 60-meter curtain of water falling from a former sea cliff, a path carved into the basalt behind the fall that puts you inside the sound and the spray with the open sky and the Icelandic summer evening behind you, looking out. This image was made from behind the curtain in the late evening of a June day when Iceland's midnight sun extends the golden hour into something indefinite — the light arriving from a sun that was not setting so much as declining to set. The panoramic format captures the full arc of the fall's curtain from inside, the water translucent in the evening light. Iceland in June offers a quality of light that simply does not exist at lower latitudes, and Seljalandsfoss frames it perfectly.