Best Turf House Stays in Reykjahlid
Vogafjós Farm Resort, on Lake Myvatn's eastern shore, is the one stay in Reykjahlid built around a genuinely traditional Icelandic farm setting, the closest the village offers to the turf-and-timber farmhouse style travellers associate with rural Iceland, paired with a working cowshed restaurant next door. Route 1 runs through Reykjahlid itself, roughly 95 km from Akureyri, and this farm resort trades the village's cluster of lakeside guesthouses for a quieter, working agricultural setting a short drive from the center. This guide covers what that traditional farm setting actually offers a traveller looking for something more grounded than a standard hotel room.
Turf house · Reykjahlíð in numbers
A working farm, not a themed hotel
Vogafjós Farm Resort is run by the same family across the property, with every room offering a private bathroom, patio and free WiFi alongside the working farm setting that defines the whole stay. The farm-to-table restaurant, built inside an active cowshed just three minutes' walk from the rooms, lets guests watch the cows being milked during breakfast, a genuinely traditional touch that a standard hotel breakfast buffet simply cannot replicate anywhere else in the wider Myvatn area at all, no matter the price paid or the specific hotel chosen for the night.
The restaurant's menu leans on the farm's own production as much as possible, smoked lamb, smoked trout, homemade cheeses and Geysir bread, giving guests a real taste of traditional Icelandic farm cooking rather than a generic hotel menu assembled from regional suppliers far from the property itself. That farm-to-table approach extends the traditional character of the stay well beyond just the building style into what actually ends up on the plate each evening of a longer visit to the working farm, a distinction most guests notice immediately at the first meal.
Beyond the farmhouse setting itself, Vogafjós offers an on-site hot tub, geothermally heated, in the same quiet, lava-and-birch landscape that also makes the property one of Reykjahlid's strongest picks for aurora viewing between September and April. That combination, traditional farm character plus modern geothermal comfort, sets it apart from either a purely rustic guesthouse or a purely modern hotel elsewhere in the village and the wider Myvatn area around the lake and its surrounding lava fields, and it gives guests a genuine reason to book two or three nights rather than just one.
Travellers specifically drawn to Iceland's traditional farm architecture and rural life should treat Vogafjós as a genuine, working example rather than a themed recreation, since the cows, the cowshed restaurant and the family running the operation are all real rather than staged for visitors. Guests wanting a livelier village center each evening, with more restaurant choice, should stay closer to Reykjahlid's own core instead, since Vogafjós trades that convenience for its genuinely rural, working-farm character instead of a more central, restaurant-heavy location closer to the lake shore itself, a trade-off worth weighing honestly before booking either option.
Reykjahlid's identity splits between its lakeside village core and the working farmland stretching along the eastern shore, and Vogafjós sits firmly in the second category, a family-run operation rather than a themed hospitality property built to evoke one. That distinction matters for travellers specifically seeking a farmhouse-style stay rather than a hotel room decorated to look rural without the working farm behind it.