Fjords, volcanic peaks, sea cliffs, golden beaches, black sand beaches and lava flows are some of the things to be seen on the 100-kilometer-long Snæfellsnes Peninsula. The dominating feature is the Snæfellsjökull ice cap, immortalized in Jules Verne’s “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” in which a group of Germans descend into the volcano and encounter many adventures.

When we were flying out of Iceland, we were identifying all the ice caps as we passed them, and Snæfellsjökull was the smallest. Some of the others are absolutely enormous. Snæfellsjökull last erupted in around A.D. 200; "the dramatic peak was torn apart when the volcano beneath the ice cap exploded and the volcano subsequently collapsed into its own magma chamber, forming a huge caldera." ("Iceland," Lonely Planet)