Jökulsá á Dal, (, ) also called Jökulsá á Brú or Jökla, is a river in the northeast of

Iceland Iceland is a Nordic countries, Nordic island country between the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between North America and Europe. It is culturally and politically linked with Europe and is the regi ...

. Of its original length of 150 km (making it the longest river in Iceland's Eastern Region), 25 km are now part of the

artificial lake A lake is often a naturally occurring, relatively large and fixed body of water on or near the Earth's surface. It is localized in a basin or interconnected basins surrounded by dry land. Lakes lie completely on land and are separate from t ...

Hálslón created for the

Kárahnjúkar Hydropower Plant Kárahnjúkar Hydropower Plant ( ), officially called Fljótsdalur Power Station ( ) is a hydroelectric power plant in Fljótsdalshérað municipality in eastern Iceland, designed to produce annually for Alcoa's Fjarðaál Aluminium smelting, alu ...

. This reduced the river's discharge from 205 m³/s to 95 m³/s, consisting of water from tributaries below the dam. Before construction of the dam, the river used to transport approximately 120 t of sediment per hour into the

North Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, with an area of about . It covers approximately 17% of Earth's surface and about 24% of its water surface area. During the Age of Discovery, it was known for ...

. The water from the reservoir is now redirected into

Lagarfljót Lagarfljót () also called Fljótið is a river situated in the east of Iceland near Egilsstaðir. Its surface measures and it is long; its greatest width is and its greatest depth . The 27 MW Lagarfossvirkjun hydropower station is located at ...

. Due to the strong current, fording of the Jökulsá á Dal isn't possible. The first bridge across it was built in 1625. The bridge on Iceland's Route 1 (''Hringvegur'') was built in 1994, when the road to

Egilsstaðir Egilsstaðir () is a town in east Iceland on the banks of the Lagarfljót river. It is part of the municipality of Múlaþing and the largest settlement of the Eastern Region (Iceland), Eastern Region with, as of 2024, a population of 2,632 inha ...

was upgraded. The previous bridge still stands, some distance downstream. In the novel '' Independent People'' by Icelandic author

Halldór Laxness Halldór Kiljan Laxness (; born Halldór Guðjónsson; 23 April 1902 – 8 February 1998) was an Icelandic writer and winner of the 1955 Nobel Prize in Literature. He wrote novels, poetry, newspaper articles, essays, plays, travelogues and sh ...

, the protagonist Bjartur rides through the river on a

reindeer The reindeer or caribou (''Rangifer tarandus'') is a species of deer with circumpolar distribution, native to Arctic, subarctic, tundra, taiga, boreal, and mountainous regions of Northern Europe, Siberia, and North America. It is the only re ...

.Sabine Barth: ''Island'' (= DuMont-Reise-Taschenbücher. 2064). DuMont, Köln 1993, , p. 168.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Jokulsa a Dal Rivers of Iceland Eastern Region (Iceland)

See also

References