Kirkjufell rises 463 metres off the north coast of Iceland's Snæfellsnes peninsula as a lone arrowhead of rock, and the reason the world knows its shape is a small waterfall in the field below it. The falls are Kirkjufellsfoss, three short steps of white water two minutes from the road, and from the path along their lower west bank they line up directly beneath the peak. That is the framing behind nearly every famous photograph of the mountain, though the roadside pull-in fills with coaches by midday. It stands by itself because its summit stayed above the ice sheet of the last Ice Age, while the glaciers scraped the land around it flat and planed its flanks into a blade. The stripes down its sides are old lava bands alternating with sandstone under a cap of tuff. Icelanders called it the church mountain for its steeple; sailors called it the sugar loaf.
That same west bank is where people come back after dark. On clear nights from about September to March the green aurora builds over the summit with the falls still in the frame, and your eyes need ten minutes away from headlights to see how much of it is there. Deep summer does the opposite: the low midnight sun sits behind the peak for hours and keeps the water lit through the night. On a still evening the fjord alongside gives you the whole cone upside down. Viewers of Game of Thrones have seen it without learning its name: this is the arrowhead the Hound picks out in the flames, standing in for the country north of the Wall. Almost nobody is on it. The way to the top is not a hike but a scramble over loose scree, with three fixed-rope sections to pull up and rappel back down. Three people died there in four years, and the landowners closed it. That costs you nothing you came for. The picture was always taken from the grass at the bottom, with the water dropping in the foreground and the whole arrowhead behind it.