Cross Kolgrafafjörður Bridge (Sword Bridge), Snæfellsnes, Iceland

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Kolgrafafjörður is a fjord on the northern side of Snæfellsnes and the closest fjord to the east of Grundarfjörður. By the fjord stands the town Kolgrafir, which it could be named after. The ancient name of Kolgrafafjörður is Urthvalafjörður , but that name may have only applied to the outer part of the fjord, before Hraunsfjörður cuts off from it to the east. Today, these two fjords are generally distinguished in speech and on maps, and that Urthvalafjörður takes over in front of the large shoals at the head of Kolgrafafjörður, which were precisely used to bridge the fjord. The fjord is quite shallow, about 40 meters where it is deepest, and there are many shallows. A bridge was built across the fjord in 2004 by building elevations on either side of the shallows and then bridging the fjord with a 230-meter-long bridge, with a 150-meter active water opening underneath. The bridge shortened the route between Grundarfjörður and Stykkishólm by over 6 kilometers. On December 13, 2012, a large amount of herring died in the fjord below the bridge, and it is estimated that around 30,000 tons died due to lack of oxygen. The shores were both full of herring, as was the bottom of the fjord, as it is very shallow. There was another herring death of the same kind in the fjord on February 1, 2013 , and it is estimated that around 22 thousand tons died. It has been suggested that the small amount of sea water entering and exiting the fjord under the bridge may have caused this lack of oxygen. No other such cases are known except for one story from 1941, when British soldiers came to the town of Kolgröf and the farmer caught a herring on the beach which, according to his diary entries, had floated ashore there dead.

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