The glacier Torfajokull peaks at 1,190 m above sea level and its total area is about 15 kmē.  It is somewhat hidden behind the surrounding mountains, especially from the north.  It is discharged by many rivers and streams, tributaries to River Markarfljot and River Holmsa running southeast.  A walk to the highest point is relatively easy and safe and the view from there is breathtaking on a fine day.  The whole Torfajokull Area is probably the most colourful, beautiful and wild rhyolite area of the country and it contains a vast high temperature area as well. The only obsidian lava fields, 11 of them altogether, are on the brink of a vast caldera around it, created during the latest cold epoch of the ice age.

Those lava fields were probably created during four eruptions during Holocene, some even after the settlement of the country.  The caldera with the solfataras, boiling mud pots and hot springs has an area of about 100 kmē.  Further away, surrounding the Torfajokull Area are several volcanoes and volcanic systems, such as Mt Hekla, the fire fissure Eldgja, the Veidivotn Area, Katla and the Eyjafjoll glacier.