Not surprisingly, since Iceland is both a mountainous and glacial island, the landscape is dotted with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of waterfalls, ranging from the small and pretty to the spectacular and beautiful. These waterfalls, many of them such as Gullfoss and Dettifoss world-famous, were frequently the artistic subject of travellers to Iceland between 1750 and 1914. This page reproduces some of that artwork, accompanied -- where I have them-- by examples of my own photographs of the same falls. Skógafoss, one of the most beautiful of all Icelandic waterfalls, is located in south Iceland. My only photograph of the falls (right) was taken in spring and fails to capture the green of summer, in contrast to the painting to the far left. One of the unusual features of Seljalandsfoss is that you can walk behind it. The photograph was taken at 4 o'clock on a mid-July morning, with the dawn mist floating over the cliff. Dettifoss, in northern Iceland, is said to be the largest and most powerful waterfall in Europe. The drawings come from F.W.W. Howell's Icelandic Pictures Drawn with Pen and Pencil (1893). The photograph was taken in the summer of 1975. Öxaráfoss, at Þingvellir, was described by J.R. Browne in 1865 as follows: The course of the river is entirely hidden by the great wall in front, and nothing of it is visible till the whole river bursts over the dark precipice, and tumbles, foaming and roaring, into the tremendous depths below... I took the photograph of Oxarafoss, at Þingvellir, many years before I came across this almost identical view drawn by J. Ross Browne and published in his The Land of Thor (1867). Gullfoss is perhaps the most famous waterfall in Iceland, capturing the imagination of 19th-century and modern-day travellers alike. This first painting of Gullfoss comes from Mrs. Disney Leith's Peeps At Many Lands: Iceland (1908); the photos to the right and below were taken in 1981. The second drawing of Gullfoss was published in F.W.W. Howell's Icelandic Pictures Drawn with Pen and Pencil (1893). Places page || Travels in 19th-Century Iceland home page