Three and a half hours inland from Reykjavík, past the point where paved roads give up, a wooden hotel sits in Ásgarður Valley as if it grew there. Highland Base Kerlingarfjöll opened in 2023 in one of the most remote corners of Iceland where you can legally sleep — and its backstory is as good as the setting.
For decades, this exact spot was a summer ski school. Generations of Icelanders came up into the Kerlingarfjöll mountains to ski on snowfields that somehow survived through July and August. By 2000 the snow had shrunk too far and the school closed. Climate change didn't just end an institution; it cleared the way for something new. The group behind the Retreat at Blue Lagoon took over the site and built a proper highland base: hotel rooms, self-catering lodges, A-frame huts and a campsite, plus geothermal baths on site. You can spend big or pitch a tent — the range of accommodation is unusual for a location this isolated.
The mountains themselves are the draw. Kerlingarfjöll is a volcanic range famous for its rhyolite hills — streaked red, orange and ochre — steaming geothermal areas and hiking trails through otherworldly terrain. The area was formally protected as a nature reserve in 2020, which should keep the wilderness character intact even as word gets out. Inside the hotel, vintage photographs of those 1960s summer skiers line the halls, grinning in old alpine gear against the same coloured slopes. It's a nice bit of continuity: the building remembers what it used to be.
Why should this matter to you? Because Iceland's highlands are normally the hard part. Most visitors see the Ring Road and never make it inland, partly because there was nowhere comfortable to stay in the true interior. Highland Base changes that calculus. You get the rainbow-over-the-valley, end-of-the-world scenery with a hot soak and a bed at the end of the day — no expedition logistics required, just a long drive and a suitable vehicle for the rough highland tracks.
It suits hikers and photographers chasing the rhyolite landscapes, travellers who've already done the south coast and want something wilder, and anyone curious about a hotel with genuine history. Go soon-ish: places this remote tend to stay under the radar only until enough people see the photos.
Original story: Matador Network
