Sprengisandur

At its southern end, it was joined with another such route, Fjallabaksvegur nyrðri, running west from Landmannalaugar mountain hot springs area.

This feature gave the area its name: it is derived from Icelandic noun sandur "sand", which denotes the volcanic ash deserts of the center of the island, and the verb sprengja that means "to ride a horse to death; to be on the point of bursting after running for too long".

One needed to ride as fast as possible, nearly driving the horses to death, to cross the mountain desert and reach the inhabited regions of the island again before one ran out of victuals.

[1] His enemies, living in the same neighbourhood but needing speed, decide to take the shorter yet more exhausting Sprengisandur route, so as to arrive at the Alþingi much earlier and have enough time to drum up some support for their case.

Both themes, the difficulty of passage and the presence of ghosts, are referred to in the famous Icelandic song Á Sprengisandi, written by Grímur Thomsen (1820–1896).