Selfoss

The sagas say that Ingólfur Arnarson, the first settler, spent the winter of 873–74 under Ingólfsfjall, the mountain west of the Ölfusá, and Selfoss itself was settled by Þórir Ásason some time after 1000. For centuries it was farmland beside a dangerous river. The town owes its existence to a bridge: in the summer of 1891, after lobbying by Tryggvi Gunnarsson, a member of the Althing, the first suspension bridge over the Ölfusá was built here, and the crossing made the spot the natural service centre for the farming district around it. The cabin built for the bridge workers, Tryggvaskáli, is the oldest building in town and housed the telephone service from 1909.

Growth was slow at first. In 1900 Selfoss had about 40 inhabitants, but in 1931 two institutions arrived that shaped it — the dairy Mjólkurbú Flóamanna and the general store Kaupfélag Árnesinga — and by 1950 the population was around 1,000. During the Second World War British troops were stationed in the town to guard the strategic bridge. In 1944 the old bridge collapsed when a milk truck drove across it, and the present bridge opened in December 1945.

On 29 May 2008 a magnitude 6.3 earthquake struck near Selfoss, damaging buildings and roads and shaking the whole of southern Iceland. The town has since grown faster than almost anywhere in the country, more than doubling from about 4,500 residents in 2000. In 2021 a new pedestrianised town centre of reconstructed historic buildings opened beside the bridge, and a bypass with a new four-lane bridge is due by 2028.

Selfoss is a sporting town above all. Its handball club's men's team won its first national championship in May 2019, and the handballers Ómar Ingi Magnússon and Elvar Örn Jónsson were both born in the town. Thorir Hergeirsson, coach of Norway's women's national team, is also counted among its notable people. The women's football team won the Icelandic Cup in August 2019, and the men's team has played in the national leagues since 1966, with the local college working with the club as an academy for young players.

The town has an unexpected link with chess history. Bobby Fischer, the American who became world champion in 1972 after his match in Reykjavík, was buried in 2008 in the cemetery of Laugardælir church just outside Selfoss, and the small Bobby Fischer Center in town displays memorabilia of his life and his famous match with Boris Spassky.

Community life gathers by the river. The town's summer festival, Sumar á Selfossi, is held in early August, and the area under the Ölfusá bridge and the Tryggvagarður garden are common places for events. The new town centre, with its copies of old buildings from across Iceland, has become a meeting place in its own right, and its success led to a decision in 2022 to expand it with 40 more houses.

Selfoss had 10,420 residents in 2025, making it the largest town in South Iceland and the seat of the municipality of Árborg, which also takes in the coastal villages of Eyrarbakki and Stokkseyri. Its population has more than doubled since 2000, from around 4,500, and the capital is only 50 kilometres away over the Hellisheiði heath.

It is a centre of commerce and small industries, with low unemployment. The town grew as the service centre for the farming region around it, and the dairy and the general store founded here in 1931 helped it grow. Fjölbrautaskóli Suðurlands, known as FSu, is one of the largest colleges in the country.

Daily life is shaped by the road. The Ring Road runs straight through town and over the two-lane Ölfusá bridge, so traffic bound for the south coast passes through the centre, and Strætó buses link Selfoss with Reykjavík, the coastal villages and inland communities such as Laugarvatn, Reykholt and Flúðir. The new bypass and bridge due by 2028 are meant to take the through traffic out of the centre.

Selfoss is dairy country. The town grew up partly around Mjólkurbú Flóamanna, the dairy firm founded in 1931, and the town grew as the service centre for the farming region around it. Skyr, the soft yoghurt-like cheese eaten with a spoon that was originally brought to Iceland from Norway, is the best known of the country's dairy foods.

The other foundations of the local table are those of Iceland as a whole: lamb, dairy and fish. Hangikjöt, smoked lamb, is often served in thin slices on flatkaka, a soft brown rye flatbread; rúgbrauð, the dense, dark and moist rye bread, is traditionally baked in pots or boxes set into the ground near hot springs; and kleina, a small knotted bun of fried dough, is a traditional pastry. In nearby Hveragerði, vegetables are grown in greenhouses under geothermal heat.

The town's newest food address is the food hall in the reconstructed Old Dairy building, a copy of a dairy plant of 1929 that was demolished in 1954, at the centre of the new town square. Around it and along the Ring Road through town are cafés, bakeries and restaurants serving locals and travellers on their way to the south coast.