This natural rock formation features seemingly unnatural vertical ridges that have been blamed on elves.

Surrounded by ash fields in Iceland, an impossibly verdant valley looks like something out of a fairytale.

This remote eatery and museum is preserved as a time capsule of a small Icelandic fishing town.

These enlarged egg sculptures represent the native birds of eastern Iceland.

Icelandic folklore says this giant boulder was ripped from the mountains and placed at its current location, where it became home to elves.

The picturesque birthplace of Icelandic democracy is drenched in the blood of its brutal past.

This beautiful, historic church looks like something out of a simpler past.

Eerie ruins of an abandoned medieval fishing village crumble atop an unforgiving stretch of earth.

Iceland's largest geothermal mud pool is a little bit haunted and a little bit dangerous.

The oldest hall in Iceland was written of in the Sagas and features a centuries-old escape tunnel.

The summer tourists on these cliffs are thousands of seabirds.

Two volcanic lakes in an enormous crater formed in a prehistoric eruption.

Three million year old fossils are exposed for all to see on this Icelandic shore.

A formerly glacier-tipped volcano that inspired none other than Jules Verne.

Every summer local children form "pysja patrols" to save young birds that have wandered from their nests.

This tumultuous Icelandic lava field looks so alien European researchers want to use it as a stand-in for Mars.

This mountain fissure hides a secret path to a secluded mossy grotto within the rock itself.

A little-visited waterfall in an otherworldly landscape.

A sulfuric martian landscape that looks far better than it smells.

Three columns of volcanic rock shoot out of the ocean.

This wrecked airplane has been sitting on a black sand beach since the 1970s.

These ominous lava formations were said to be an entrance to the netherworld so of course they inspired a famous metal band.

A stratovolcano located in the south of Iceland, with a long history of charted activity and a rich mythology attached.

If a glacial river suddenly diving into a sheer chasm via a dramatic, multi-stage waterfall isn't peak Iceland, it's certainly close.