Höfn

Höfn means "harbour", and the town owes its existence to one of the very few natural harbours on Iceland's south coast. In 1897 the merchant Ottó Tuliníus moved a trading post that had been established in 1861 at Papós, about 15 kilometres to the north-west, to the present site; the old trading house, Gamlabúð, came with it and served as the main shop for southeast Iceland's farmers.

The settlement grew slowly around trade and fishing. In 1946, with about 300 inhabitants, it became a separate municipality, Hafnarhreppur, having until then belonged to Nesjahreppur. An economic boom began after the 255-metre Hornafjörður bridge opened in 1961, at the time the second-longest bridge in Iceland, and the south-east corner long remained one of the most remote parts of the country until the roads improved in the last decades of the 20th century; the Ring Road was completed in 1974, when the bridge over the Skeiðará river opened.

Höfn gained town status at the end of 1988, with 1,647 inhabitants the following year. In 1994 it merged with Nesjahreppur and in 1998 with neighbouring districts to form the municipality of Hornafjörður. The Almannaskarðsgöng tunnel opened in 2005, reducing winter closures over the pass to the east, and in 2021 the town finally gained geothermal district heating, piped 20 kilometres from boreholes at Hoffell; before that it relied on electric boilers dating from the 1980s.

The town's great celebration is Humarhátíð, the lobster festival, held around the start of July with concerts and other performances, competitions, a funfair and dishes made with the local langoustine.

Höfn has several small museums for a town of its size. Gamlabúð, the old trading house that has served at least three purposes and been moved around south-east Iceland, is now the visitor centre for Vatnajökull National Park; the art museum named after the painter Svavar Guðnason opened in the town hall in 2011; and a private collection of rocks occupies the old swimming pool, a nod to a hobby popular across the east. The arts and crafts scene is active, with artists' workshops and galleries in Mikligarður, an old building by the harbour. Hafnarkirkja, the modern Protestant church, dates from 1966, and a small Catholic church was consecrated in 2013.

The glacier country around the town has drawn film-makers: the James Bond films A View to a Kill and Die Another Day, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Batman Begins were filmed in the area, and a song in the 2015 Bollywood film Dilwale was shot nearby. The district is also the birthplace of the writer Þórbergur Þórðarson, born at Hali in Suðursveit, where a museum honours him. The local football club, Sindri, plays in the Icelandic third tier.

About 1,760 people lived in Höfn in 2024. It is the main settlement of the municipality of Hornafjörður, which covers a huge stretch of territory along the narrow band of land between Vatnajökull and the Atlantic but has only around 2,400 people in all. Höfn has a primary school formed by merging three older ones, an upper secondary school with day and distance students, a health centre, a pharmacy, a bank, a golf course and a swimming pool.

Fishing and tourism are the main sources of work. The fish-processing company Skinney-Þinganes, one of the largest fish factories in the east of Iceland, employs a large number of people, and its main products are saltfish and processed langoustine; herring and capelin are also processed. Ten large boats and a number of smaller ones work from the harbour, whose entrance shifts with the shoals and must be dredged so that ships can moor safely. In summer, tour operators take visitors onto the glaciers.

The town sits on a peninsula with the sea on three sides, beaches along the shore to the south-east and small islands to the east, the largest of them Mikley. Glacial rivers and shifting lagoons reshape the coast around it, and the outlet glaciers of Vatnajökull are part of the everyday view.

Höfn is one of the most important harbours for langoustine fishing in Iceland, and the catch defines its kitchen. Called humar in Icelandic and often translated as lobster, the langoustine is found in abundance in the fishing grounds off the south-east coast, and many of the town's eating places feature it as the local speciality. The lobster festival each summer celebrates it with different foods made with it.

The fish factories produce saltfish — cod preserved by drying after salting — along with processed langoustine, herring and capelin. Across Iceland, haddock, plaice, halibut, herring and shrimp are the fish most eaten, and lamb, whose quality is a point of national pride, is the everyday meat; reindeer, which live wild on the moorlands of the east, is a costly delicacy.

National staples are easy to find: hangikjöt, smoked lamb; harðfiskur, fish dried by cold air and wind and traditionally eaten with butter; skyr, which has the consistency of strained yogurt but is classed as a fresh sour milk cheese; and kleinur, small knotted buns of fried dough. The town's single supermarket, in the small shopping centre in the middle of town, also houses the state liquor store.