Raufarhöfn

Basalt monoliths reach skyward from a treeless headland, their shadows wheeling across the tundra as the midnight sun traces its low golden arc. Raufarhöfn, a village of fewer than two hundred people in Iceland's far north, guards the Arctic Henge — a stone monument raised to the old Norse relationship with light and darkness.

The Arctic Henge is a continuing community artwork conceived by local hotelier Erlingur Thoroddsen, its gates and columns aligned to the dwarves of the Eddic calendar; the build is still growing, arc by arc, which is part of its strange charm. The village below was once a thriving herring port — the harbour still feels oversized for its few boats — and it sits on Melrakkaslétta, the flattest, most exposed stretch of Icelandic coast, where the wind rarely stops and the horizon seems to bend. Midnight sun holds from late May into July, and in the dark months the absence of light pollution makes this one of Iceland's finest aurora coasts. The Arctic Coast Way runs through on route 870.