Reynisfjara is a beach of black sand on the south coast of Iceland, backed by a cliff of basalt columns and facing an ocean that has killed people who stood too close to it. Everything here is volcanic. The sand was never washed in from a shore; it is ground-down lava, black to the grain, and it stays black when it is wet. At the back of the beach the columns of Garðar rise in stacked tiers, most of them six-sided and so regular that they look cut by hand. Nothing carved them. A thick flow of lava cooled slowly, shrank as it hardened and split into these pillars, and they frame the mouth of a shallow cave you can walk into when the sea allows. Offshore stand the Reynisdrangar, three dark sea stacks rising out of the surf; Icelanders say they are two trolls and their ship, caught by the sunrise as they hauled it to land and turned to stone where they stood.
The walk is the beach itself: flat black sand running toward the stacks, the cliff of Reynisfjall on one side and the open Atlantic on the other, the surf so loud that you raise your voice. That surf is the other thing Reynisfjara is known for. There is no land between here and Antarctica, so the waves arrive with the whole ocean behind them, and every so often one runs far up the dry sand without warning. These sneaker waves have pulled people into the sea, and a warning light at the entrance now tells you how dangerous the day is. The beach changes with the season. In summer puffins nest on the green slopes of Reynisfjall and fly out over the sand; on clear winter nights the northern lights move above the stacks, and because the beach is easy to reach after dark, this is where many people see them for the first time. The trolls are still there at sunset, black against an orange sky, waiting for a ship they will never launch.