Snorri's Pool — Snorralaug

The medieval scholar who wrote down most of what we know of Norse mythology bathed in this stone pool — and, by tradition, was murdered fleeing toward it.

Snorralaug is a circular stone-built hot pool at Reykholt in West Iceland, fed by a natural hot spring and connected by a stone tunnel to the farmhouse that once stood beside it. It takes its name from Snorri Sturluson, the 13th-century chieftain, historian, and poet who lived at Reykholt and is credited with writing down the Prose Edda and Heimskringla — the two works most responsible for preserving Norse mythology in a form later generations could actually read. The pool itself predates Snorri by some margin — it is described in sources from before his residency at Reykholt — but it entered the historical record permanently through its association with him. Snorri used the pool regularly, by most accounts for both bathing and for holding informal meetings and negotiations, the warm water apparently considered conducive to serious talk. The stone-lined underground passage linking the pool to the farmhouse, allowing him to move between the two without being exposed outside, still survives in part. Snorri's death in 1241 is where the pool's connection to his story turns dark. He had fallen out of favour with the King of Norway over his political maneuvering in Iceland's internal power struggles during the Sturlung Age, and armed men were sent to kill him. According to Sturlunga Saga, the attackers arrived at Reykholt at night; Snorri, roused from sleep, attempted to take shelter in the cellar of the farmhouse rather than the pool itself, but was found and killed there, unarmed, by men who had once been his allies. Reykholt remains a working heritage and study site today, and Snorralaug — one of the very few structures in Iceland that can be traced directly and continuously to the saga age — is preserved as its centrepiece, a rare case of a folklore-adjacent site that is also, unambiguously, verified history.