Fjótsdalur consists of the fairly primitive sod-roofed youth hostel (above), a sort of glorified mountain hut, and one farmhouse. The hostel had one other guest that night, a German woman who had just finished university and was biking around Iceland for several months before working in a hotel for the summer. She told me about having slept in her tent in the snow in a dwarf birch forest, very cool. But the strong wind that blew everywhere in Iceland apparently made the biking difficult at times.