Skútustaðagígar, the ring craters on the south shore

At the southern end of Mývatn the ground is pocked with dozens of rounded, grass-covered craters — Skútustaðagígar. They are not volcanoes: lava once flowed over wet marsh, the trapped water flashed to steam and blew rings of ash out of the ground, and two thousand years later they sit as soft green bowls with paths looping between and around them.

The shapes are what photographs. Walk the marked loop and the horizon keeps rearranging: a couple on a crater rim with the lake behind, the same rim seen from below as a green curve against sky, or a wide frame where three or four craters overlap into a landscape that reads as nowhere on earth. A longer lens from one rim across to another compresses them into stacked arcs. The lake sits to the north, so evening light comes across the water and rims everything; in June that light runs to midnight, and in the short winter day the low sun models the craters better than any summer noon.

This is also the gentlest walk in the Mývatn area — flat gravel paths, a short climb onto the nearest rims, benches, and a car park right there. It suits families, older guests and anyone in impractical shoes, which makes it the natural first stop of a Mývatn session before the harder ground at Dimmuborgir or Hverir.

Two local realities. From roughly May to July this is one of Iceland's most important waterbird breeding areas: stay on the marked paths, keep out of the marsh and the grass, and respect any nesting closures — this is not a place to wander off-trail for a better angle. And Mývatn means midge lake: in warm, still weather from late spring the swarms are dense enough to ruin a session. They do not bite, but they get into everything; a head net in the bag and a breezy day are the two answers.