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 The
glacial river Kudafljot in south Iceland has a large catchment area. Its
main supplier is river Skafta, lake Langisjor’s discharge, which collects
a great number of tributaries en route through the Laki Area. There it
collects mainly spring fed rivers and brooks, which originally started as
glacial streams from the edge of glacier Sidujokull. This muddy water
disappears on the outwash plain and gets filtered before reappearing as
icecold spring water. Farther down river larger tributaries, rivers
Tungufljot, Holmsa, and the greater part of river Eldvatn, are added a
short distance north of road #1. A larg branch of river Skafta continues
east to Kirkjubaejarklaustur, where it starts spreading over the large
outwash plains between the counties Alftaver and Medalland to the sea.
Before the river was bridged, it was forded on horse back in spite of the
lack of reliable fords. Every time a new ford had to be found. The river
is partly deep and treacherous because of quicksand. The averate flow is
230 m3/sec and the maximum has been measured 2000 m3/sec.
The minimum flow measured 110 m3/sec in the estuaries. Many
travellers drowned attempting to ford this river as so many others in the
country, because they did not know how to find the proper fords. Usually
the river was forded where it is approximately four kilometres wide. The
first bridge was built in 1993 and opened in 1994. Prior to that, the
bridges of its main tributaries were used.
According to The Book of Settlements, Vilbaldur set off from Ireland on
his vessel Kudi. He arrived in the river’s estuaries and the river was
named accordingly. The legend has it, that the estuaries were a bay at
the time and on of the country’s trading posts was to be found on the
island Kudaholmi, where artefacts have been unearthened.
Seals are hunted in the estuaries and anglers catch sea trout there.
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