By Colin Covert, Star Tribune (Minneapolis) (TNS)

It was a small five-passenger elevator, the sort of open-scaffold, spool-cabled rig that lowers professional window washers down skyscrapers. There’s nowhere else on Earth where they lower volcano sightseers.

After a few jolts and near-scrapes against the steep surface opening, we descended in the lift’s alternate speeds, slow and very slow. At 100 feet down the crater’s ever-widening dome, I was thankful we wore helmets and safety harnesses inside the metal cage. We were still a dizzying height above the dormant lava chamber’s floor, 300 feet over our destination. Falling to the rocks below would equal diving off the torch of the Statue of Liberty.

As we edged down the hollow, spotlights from the bottom revealed immense geological murals on the walls. Every direction showed an extravaganza of crystalline frescos. Each wall held plumes of ginger yellow, vibrant amethyst, emerald, coral orange and magenta. Dangling at breath-sucking altitude in the colossal space was like a spider hanging from a spectacular cathedral roof. If I trembled a bit, it was common Icelandic hypothermia as chill rain came showering down the overhead opening. So I said, anyway. In Iceland, you don’t act wimpy.

The tiny North Atlantic island draws adventurous visitors like an electromagnet. It’s an exotic Arctic remnant of the world’s last ice age: gargantuan fjords, massive glaciers, geothermal geysers, azure lagoons, gritty black-sand beaches, moss-covered lava fields and thundering multilevel waterfalls. The appeal isn’t all prehistoric. For the past 20 years, uber-hip Reykjavik has been acclaimed as the coolest bar-crawling city in the known cosmos.

But of all the haunting vistas I have encountered across Iceland, the interior of Thrihnukagigur is the most astonishing. Nowhere else can you take an elevator to the base of a volcano’s magma chamber or see an Icelandic panorama underground more bizarre than the landscapes above.

The 15-million-year-old cavern is also one of Iceland’s most exclusive attractions, only beginning to experience its potential as a tourist attraction. Depending how you tally the active mountains and fissures, Iceland has around 30 volcanoes. Some are temperamental leviathans famous for bang and boom fireworks displays and misty clouds of hydrochloric acid.

Thrihnukagigur was under-the-radar until the 1970s, a small 12-by-12 foot opening on a hilly landscape, no classic volcanic giant. It was first investigated by spelunkers lowered on ropes. The suspended lift was built to lower National Geographic Channel camera crews filming Icelandic volcanoes after a huge 2010 eruption made Eyjafjallajokull the world’s most famous. Thrihnukagigur has been open to public tours only since the summer of 2012, the hidden gem of a big tourism boom. Every year, more than 100 million people visit volcanic sites globally. Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, home of the Kilauea volcano, draws about 2 million every year.

Thrihnukagigur is located just a half-hour’s drive southeast of the capital. After you park, it’s a 50-minute trek from the road through a path across a ragged, rising lava field, the kind of bedrock NASA’s Curiosity rover enjoys on Mars. From mid-May through late September, base camp guides in the welcoming cabin serve tired arrivals local lamb stew at the steep summit of the two-mile hike. They say more people have reached the top of Mount Everest than the bottom of their subterranean site.

Reaching the end of the elevator descent, the shepherd unbuckled his four passengers’ harnesses, encouraging us to go ahead, scramble around and explore. We stepped out on the ground floor, a vast uneven pile of granite, big enough to hold three NBA basketball courts. Other than his general advice and some trivial rope barriers you might put in your garden, the danger guidelines were the general local attitude that visitors will make their own strategies and won’t do anything risky. In countries like Iceland that have no tort culture, tourists are largely responsible for their own safety.

The symmetrical cone-shaped interior is an enthralling museum of creation and destruction. Its rippling beauty is utterly undisturbed. Nothing interrupts the timeless and powerful visual spectacle of elemental art at the foot of the near-bottomless pit. It has no rise in temperature, no whiff of sulfur, none of the animal life you might meet in other caves. The only signs of life are the few humans hiking around the uneven walking paths, watching the barren interior’s shifting rainbow field of scalded and charred rock face with the hushed focus of spectators at a tennis match.

Unlike many Icelandic volcanoes, Thrihnukagigur is silent, fast asleep since its last eruption 4,000 years ago. While most volcanoes spew superheated magma as they break through the soil, creating major slopes, this was a lava hiccup. Thrihnukagigur was undiscovered when Jules Verne sent an exploring team down an Icelandic abyss to underground shoals of sea monsters in “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” but it feels like that strange subterranean world. It is lonely and beautiful, haunting and melancholic. With the sky only visible as a distant crack of light, the cave floor could be a passage to the core of the planet.

After almost an hour in a different world, it was time to move on. The five-hour tour is not for the faint of heart in terms of heights or expenses. It’s one of the priciest day trips from Reykjavik, around $300 — about half the price of round-trip airfare from Minneapolis — depending on the value of the Icelandic krona when you book. But it’s an only-in-Iceland adventure unlike anything I’ve experienced before. The volcano earned every penny.

“Inside the Volcano” tours are at http://bit.ly/18SVeNk.

(c)2015 Star Tribune (Minneapolis) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: A small elevator lowers visitors into Icleland’s Thrihnukagigur volcano. (insidethevolcano.com/TNS)

By Molly Born, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (TNS)

WESTFJORDS, Iceland–It’s hard to say what’s a greater wonder: The remote treasures of this country’s northwest region, or the fact that so few tourists ever visit.

It takes an adventurous spirit and a bit of planning to map out this road trip to the upper reaches of the planet, a roughly six-hour drive from the Nordic island country’s capital, Reykjavik, but the reward is an endless and largely isolated panorama of nature easily accessible by car only part of the year.

My beau, Dillon, our friend Justin and I visited the Westfjords last month, just before the start of the summer season when snow and ice patches still covered some roads and a few remained impassable.

After three days in Reykjavik, our rental arrived: an SUV with four-wheel drive and snow tires with studs for extra traction. The guy who handed us the keys asked where we were headed and looked dubious when we answered. A friend who visited Iceland suggested we download an app that would alert authorities in case of emergency and confessed she worried we weren’t prepared.

Maybe we didn’t know exactly what we were getting into. But, we thought, if growing up in West Virginia taught us anything, it ought to be how to drive in snow.

Only 14 percent of summer travelers and roughly 6 percent of winter travelers to Iceland visit the Westfjords. Following Route 61 north as it wrapped around one fjord after another revealed sprawling farms and red-roofed churches dotting the treeless landscape. Snow-streaked cliffs rose out on either side of the fjords’ blue waters. Along the side of the road, man-made stone piles, known as cairn, help fellow travelers know they’re on the right path.

In Isafjordur, the peninsula’s largest town with 2,600 residents, we dined on the catch of the day and a heaping portion of curry-flavored seafood soup in a window seat overlooking the mountains. Two daily flights connect the town to Reykjavik, and ferries to the Hornstrandir Nature Reserve on Iceland’s northernmost peninsula leave daily from Isafjordur in the summer.

The next day, we had the option of heading back the way we came or exploring the southern parts of the fjords, where the road conditions were said to be less favorable. The lure of the powerful waterfall Dynjandi and tales of geothermal hot springs so remote you have to ask for directions drew us south.

This stretch along the fjords proved more treacherous. At one point as we climbed, the scene was almost totally white, with mountains of untouched snow and a milky sky interrupted only by the occasional power line. Alarmingly, the path began to blend into our surroundings, too. Occasionally a giant plow truck would hug the side of the road to allow us passage.

During one white-knuckle ascent, a wall of packed snow maybe 10 feet high towered to our right and a steep slope lay perilously close on the left. There were few guard rails.

Neither was the way back a breeze. We crept down, and as the ocean came into view, we met a sedan (a sedan!) charging up the mountain _ likely a local accustomed to these serpentine roads.

When we rounded another fjord and saw Dynjandi in the distance, we exploded in laughter. From our view, it appeared completely still. We’d come so far for what looked to be a frozen waterfall. What we actually found was a spectacular series of waterfalls that spilled into one another. The hike to the base of still partially frozen Dynjandi–“thunderous” in Icelandic–offered a stunning view of the falls and the vastness of the fjord.

We settled on one more stop during our long drive to Holmavik. A tour guide we met in Isafjordur suggested a small hot spring near Hotel Flokalundur, a few minutes’ drive from the ferry to Flatey Island, the largest in a group of islands off the southern coast of the Westfjords. Only in researching for this piece did I discover this spot actually had a name: Hellulaug Hot Spring.

The hotel was closed for the off-season, so we asked a pair of construction workers for directions. A quarter-mile away we found a parking lot, and tucked into a cliff, a pool of water heated naturally by the earth, overlooking the ocean. Markedly different from the Myvatn Nature Baths we would visit later in our trip and the Blue Lagoon, a popular hot spring for tourists near Reykjavik, this felt like our own private hot spring without another person in sight for miles.

While sparsely populated, the Westfjords is home to some of the kindest people we’ve met as tourists, and there’s no better example than Siggi, who we found unloading his snowmobile along the main road in Holmavik, a town of roughly 400 people.

We stopped to ask him if he knew someplace we could buy a few beers, knowing we’d arrived long past last call and after the state-owned liquor store had closed. He had kind eyes and said he had a few beers at home and invited us to follow him to his place up the hill. We tagged along, and he reached in his truck, handed us a plastic bag with three tall-boys and went inside to fetch two bottles. We offered to pay him, but he wouldn’t take a cent.

“I hope you enjoy Iceland,” he said with a smile.

The Museum of Icelandic Sorcery & Witchcraft in Holmavik was our last stop in the Westfjords before heading east to Akureyri. Its website bills it as the “Home of the Necropants,” but it’s much more than that macabre title would suggest.

The small museum, opened in 2000, traces the country’s history of the occult and memorializes those accused of practicing it. During the 17th century, 21 men and one woman accused of witchcraft were burned at the stake. One such practice, according to Icelandic legend, involved skinning a dead man from the waist down and placing a coin in the scrotum. Whoever wore these “necropants” would be wealthy for life.

A large map on the wall donned push pins marking the hometowns of the museum’s international visitors. Pittsburgh was already accounted for, but we added one for our home state, too.

It was amazing to realize that we were among the first West Virginians to visit this museum, but that only confirmed what we had already discovered about this rarely visited part of Iceland.

As a friend who recently visited put it: “It’s just you and miles upon miles of unbelievably gorgeous landscape, so untouched that it feels like you are the first human to ever lay eyes on it.” She was referring to Iceland as a whole, but it embodied the Westfjords in particular, a place where the world feels like only yours, even if for a moment.

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WHERE TO STAY:

My crew booked all Airbnb apartments and one (incredible) micro house, all reasonably priced when split three ways. Most places included linens, towels, Wi-Fi, free parking, a kitchen or kitchenette and other amenities. Hostels and family-owned “guesthouses” might be cheaper options.

GETTING AROUND:

We rented our SUV through Reykjavik Cars. If you think you may travel on any unpaved roads, gravel insurance (yes, this exists) and a GPS are musts. You might be able to use your own navigation system _ just make sure to first download any updates required for international travel before your trip. Friends who recently road-tripped around Iceland also recommended Happy Campers, a camper van rental company.

Gas stations are usually pay-at-the-pump and don’t always have an attendant. American debit and credit cards should work at most pumps. The website Road.is has up-to-date travel conditions; avoid the routes marked “impassable.” Trust me.

WHERE TO EAT:

Food and alcohol, like everything in Iceland, is expensive. If you’re on a budget, find a grocery store and pick up some cheap options for breakfast and lunch or pack some in your luggage. Buy booze at the duty-free shop in the airport. State-owned liquor stores called “Vinbuoin” also sell wine, spirits and beer. When you’re ready to splurge, though, don’t miss the hearty, curry-flavored seafood soup at Husid in Isafjordur.

(c)2015 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo by Brian Pocius via Flickr