Markarfljót () is a

river A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases, a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of wate ...

in the south of

Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...

. It is approximately 100 kilometers long. The Markarfljót rises in the Rauðafossafjöll massif, east of the volcano

Hekla Hekla (), or Hecla, is a stratovolcano in the south of Iceland with a height of . Hekla is one of Iceland's most active volcanoes; over 20 eruptions have occurred in and around the volcano since 874. During the Middle Ages, the Icelandic Norse ...

. The main sources for the river are the glaciers

Mýrdalsjökull Mýrdalsjökull (pronounced , Icelandic for "(the) mire dale glacier" or "(the) mire valley glacier") is an ice cap in the south of Iceland. It is to the north of Vík í Mýrdal and to the east of the smaller ice cap Eyjafjallajökull. Between t ...

and

Eyjafjallajökull Eyjafjallajökull (; ), sometimes referred to by the numeronym E15, is one of the smaller ice caps of Iceland, north of Skógar and west of Mýrdalsjökull. The ice cap covers the caldera of a volcano with a summit elevation of . The volcan ...

. It flows through narrow gorges in the mountainous area between the glaciers

Tindfjallajökull Tindfjallajökull () is a stratovolcano in the south of Iceland. It has erupted rocks of basaltic to rhyolitic composition, and a 5-km-wide caldera was formed during the eruption of the 54,000-year-old Thórsmörk Ignimbrite. It is capped by a gla ...

and Torfajökull, then spreads in the wide sandur plains at Iceland's south coast, near Þórsmörk. The Markarfljót takes its course first north, then west of Þórsmörk and finally empties into the

Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe an ...

west of Eyjafjallajökull. One of the Markarfljót's tributaries is the river Krossá , flowing through Þórsmörk, which is notorious for sudden changes in its water level. The highest discharge ever measured in the Markarfljót was in 1967, during the Steinholt

jökulhlaup A jökulhlaup ( ) (literally "glacial run") is a type of glacial outburst flood. It is an Icelandic term that has been adopted in glaciological terminology in many languages. It originally referred to the well-known subglacial outburst flood ...

. The first bridge over the river was opened in 1934 near Litli Dímon . It is 242 meters long and was at the time the longest bridge in Iceland. A second bridge was built in 1978 at Emstrur . A third bridge was opened in 1992 a few kilometers south of the first bridge.

References

Rivers of Iceland Southern Region (Iceland) {{Iceland-river-stub