The meaning of the Icelandic word ‘vök‘ is ‘a place with open water in between an otherwise frozen sea or lake‘. In the old days, people used to wash their clothes in Urriðavatn (Lake Trout), because there was always open water, no matter how severe the winter was. The locals thought it was a sea monster, ‘Tuska’, that melted or broke the ice. Tusk means rag, i.e. Tuska was a Nixie with a shabby appearance. The cracks in the ice were called ‘Tuskuvakir’, and Tuska could come up there in winter. However, what kept the water open in winter turned out to be jarðhiti – ground heat. Lake Urriðavatn has its own hot spring inside itself!
The very special bath called Vök is located 6 km from Egilsstaðir and was completed in 2019. Here they have built a beautiful facility based on the hot spring inside Urriðavatn. 76 degree Celsius water from the bottom of the lake is mixed with cold water from the lake to just the right temperature. On shore, there are changing rooms, hot and cold (!) steam baths, two larger pools with warm water and a submerged bar by the pool.
Two hexagonal pools of warm water float (!) in the cold water. The floating pools are made by the Finnish company ‘Bluet Floating Solutions’. If you want, you can enter the lake for a cold scalding, as there are ladders leading to the lake. Hot and cold alternately – that’s the very best. Try it!
We have visited Vök several times, including Easter 2021 – in the middle of the corona. All public baths in Iceland were closed and we really wondered what to do. How could we perform the daily bath when everything was either closed or frozen? It turned out to become a secret bath of the cold type. In Urriðavatn, it’s easy to swim even in the middle of winter – as there is always open water in between the ice! We changed onshore, jumped in for a dip and then returned to the car. As we were leaving the parking lot, a car drove in to check on unauthorized guests. Good then, that we just had a short bath next to the pools and didn’t try to get in for a longer session!
