Icelandic Hot Springs and Hälsa Custom Saunas

From Icelandic Hot Springs to Hälsa Saunas: Embracing the Art of Hot and Cold Therapy

Many people have flown over Mt. Hood, Oregon on their way to and from Seattle, Washington. It’s an 11,000-foot lone dormant volcanic peak that last erupted in 1866 and you can not miss it if you have a window seat on a clear day. Like any region with volcanic activity, there are hot springs throughout. There are over 160 hot springs in the Pacific Northwest and I was lucky to live in Oregon and Northern California for parts of my childhood. A childhood filled with hot springs!

When we lived in Eugene, Oregon, we’d go to Terwilliger Hot Springs (we just called it “Cougar Hot Springs”), about an hour outside of town. Located in the Willamette National Forest, Cougar Hot Springs is a series of cascading pools that go from hottest to coolest. I loved soaking in the hottest pool I could find for as long as I could, before running down the path with steam pouring off of my body as I quickly jumped into the ice cold spring pool at the bottom. Once I was good and numb, I’d run back up the rocky path to the hottest pool and I would explode with tingling pinprick sensations throughout my body. After a minute or two, I would relax, which was not something I was very good at as a child. Outside of eating a snack and taking a nap on a blanket, this was how I passed my days at Cougar Hot Springs. Little did I know that I was engaging in the same centuries old tradition of hot and cold therapy that Hälsa Saunas specializes in with their custom saunas and cold plunges.

After I moved to Texas as a teenager, my days of hot and cold plunging were behind me. (Texas is home to many mineral springs, but not many hot springs). However, my love for hot springs was revived in 2017 when my wife, some friends, and I planned a trip to the Golden Circle of Iceland. The Golden Circle is a region of western Iceland that allows one to see some of the country’s highlights in a short period of time and does not require a vehicle capable of offroading on glaciers. This is a real thing in Iceland and there are many vehicles that look like they have been plucked out of a Mad Max movie or simply taken from the most recent Monster Truck rally in a southern town near you. Along with its smoothly paved roads, the Golden Circle is home to Thingvellir National Park, Geysir, and Gullfoss Falls.

After getting our rental car, we immediately drove to Reykjadalur Hot Springs about an hour from Reykjavik Airport. This hot spring was unlike any I had ever encountered: a long wooden walkway runs parallel to a small stream with separate pools damned up by rocks every 30-40 yards. Surrounding these pools are hilly meadows spotted with flowers and the occasional flock of sheep. There were hundreds of people enjoying the pools and they went on and on for what felt like miles. I was immediately reminded of my days spent at Cougar Hot Springs as kids ran by from pool-to-pool and I knew then that I was going to enjoy Iceland.

I loved the windswept vistas, the massive waterfalls, the volcanic terrain, and the alluringly frigid Greenland Sea that surrounds the western part of the country. Though, my top priority became hot springs as we made our way around the Golden Circle. One afternoon we enjoyed an expensive spa-like hot spring with a full changing room, cafe, and gym called Sundhöll Selfoss. Shortly after that, I downloaded an app that shows where every hot spring is located in Iceland. The number is 45, and that does not sound like a big number, but Iceland is a very small country with only 400,000 people, so we were able to plan our roadtrip stops around the next approaching hot spring, many of which we learned were completely free. We also learned that some hot springs are sites of historical and sacred significance and are therefore not to be entered (luckily we did not have to learn this the hard way).

I did learn the hard way though when I jumped into a pool of freezing cold water formed by the continental divide in Thingvellir National Park. As I hyperventilated my way out of the pool of water I had just foolishly jumped into, two park employees, a man and a woman, came over and looked down on me with a look of incredulity. The man said, “You are swimming in the water… it’s not illegal.” Confused and shivering, I said, “Okay. Thanks!” The woman rolled here eyes and said in perfect deadpan English, “It’s illegal, people have died.” Oops!

The absolute highlight and the core memory of the trip for me was at Landbrotalaug Hot Springs. It has a 3.9 star rating on Google and is the least impressive hot spring one might find in Iceland. However, I’m a romantic at heart. We arrived a little after 11:00 pm after a day of driving, renegotiating how much to spend on our next meal (we learned that food is exorbitantly expensive in Iceland), and curious about the last leg of our trip in Snæfellsnes Peninsula. For a while, we were pretty certain we were lost and some people (not me) were losing the desire to find another hot spring. Then we saw it - a simple pool of water with a rusted pipe sticking out of the ground and a steady stream of boiling hot water trickling into the pool. Sitting in that hot spring, the Greenland Sea to my left, my wife to my right, my friends across from us, I remember seeing the sun hover along the horizon just after Midnight, shining subtle streaks of rays of light onto the hills and mountain all around us. Within minutes, low clouds and fog crept over those hills and mountains and enveloped us on all sides except for the sea and sun to my left. I felt deep joy at having that experience with people I love in a place unlike any other I had been.

Iceland’s hot springs are worth the air travel and worth the reminder that our bodies and souls desire a reset. A chance to soak, recuperate, push through healthy stress, and come out the other side ready for the next adventure. We can’t all live in the Pacific Northwest or Iceland, but the potential to consistently incorporate this same healthy practice in our lives exists behind the glass of a Hälsa custom sauna.

Otha Graham