Volcano Horsemen Retreat

They are the forges where Hephaestus forged the lightning bolts of Zeus, the abode of the Kami progenitors of Japan, the gateway to the underworld in countless cultures: volcanoes are a place of violence and mystery. They are the threshold to a hidden world whose brutality has been attracting and terrifying mankind since the beginning of time.

From the Minoan eruption of Thera - whose explosion probably fed the myth of Atlantis - to the destruction of Pompeii and Ercolano, the history and mythology of the entire world is studded with countless stories about volcanoes. However, the place which fate has been intertwined with their activity the most is without any doubt Iceland.

Canyons, geysers, immense expanses of solidified lava: it is the Land of Ice and Fire. There are few places in the world where the landscape shows so clearly the activity of its own subsoil.

In northern Iceland, off the country’s canonical sightseeing routes, against the breathtaking backdrop of pitch-colored expanses dappled with white perpetual snows, a now-extinct volcano silently dominates its own horizon.

It is the Hrossaborg, or “horse castle”: a perfect ring whose walls - open to the west - generate an astonishing natural enclosure which had been used over the centuries - as the name suggests - to herders and their horses.

In the age of cars and planes, fast travel and global tourism, the experience of riding solitary along unfamiliar trails takes on unprecedented value and incredible significance. 

This is the aim of Volcano Horsemen Retreat: YAC’s open call to implement Iceland’s stable system by creating a new facility in the Hrossaborg Crater.

Here, in the solitude of vast wastelands, the archaic experience of traveling on animal backs will culminate at the bonfires of the facility being welcomed into the mighty arms of a silent volcano.

YAC thanks the architects who will take up this challenge.