Our most challenging and enlightening adventure to date must be our week in Iceland, which we visited in late March 2024. The ‘Around Iceland’ visitors guide has a welcome note from Lilja Dögg Alfreðsdóttir, the Minister of Culture and Business Affairs which sums up the country nicely: “every day there is an adventure waiting to happen in Iceland. With its abundance of mountains, glaciers, rivers, lakes, caves and otherwise rough terrain to be tackled…” followed by: “…I want to emphasise the safety awareness for all travellers and encourage you to educate yourselves before you start your travels…weather and nature dictate Iceland’s everyday life…”. Reading this at the end of our week was perhaps in the wrong order as whilst we were prepared for Iceland’s weather, as far as the cold goes, having come from 2 weeks in Norway and 4 weeks skiing – but what we didn’t understand was the impact of the wind.
Icy-cold Iceland
We have never experienced wind and ice like in, well, Iceland! We had regular winds of 60km/hr with gusts up to 85 km/hr that would flatten you if you weren’t holding on to something (there’s countless YouTube/TikTok/Insta reels and videos showing people trying to stand up/ drink water, climb a hill in the strong wind – all very amusing to watch but challenging when there in person). The cold Arctic air coming from the North will take the temperature from minus 5c to minus 30c and you’ll feel it unless you have windproof clothes on. Each day we added another layer of our ski gear to our outfit and put headbands over our ears underneath our hats (the ear-aches from the cold wind are not pleasant) scarfs around our noses and faces, yet still the icy knives of the northerly winds penetrated. We learnt to prepare for it and embraced it as part of the experience, but it did limit our ability to go for long hikes and safety whilst driving.
Quirky colourful Iceland
Having got the weather extremes out of the way, we really loved Iceland and thought it was one of the purest, quirkiest culture experiences we’ve experienced (kind of like Japan, when you’re there you’re soaking in all things Japanese – same in Iceland). We stayed in downtown Reykjavik and had a big sunny studio apartment with views up to the iconic Reykjavik church one way and down to rainbow street the other way. Just across the road was a great coffee shop Babalu and around the corner was the best croissant shop Le Braud which had a queue every morning for their croissants and cinnamon buns.
The capital city is home to 60% of Iceland’s population and I think they were in hiding when we were there over Easter in 2024. The public holidays meant most of the town was shut but we still enjoyed walking around the waterfront and down the main streets -including the rainbow arcade – and discovering some pretty quirky places like the Punk museum in an old toilet block, the Grandi harbour waterfront area – apparently happening in Summer and even managed to catch a couple of local bands playing at 12 Tonar, a Reykjavik record bar 300 m from our place.
Another highlight was the Perlan Nature Museum – an absolute highlight and hardly mentioned in any tourist brochures. This iconic museum opened in 1991 on the site of the old town water tanks and has incredible views over Reykjavik and the surrounding area. It is open until 10pm and a great place to watch the sunset (8pm when we were there) before exploring the ice caves, watching the northern lights show and the volcano show, interacting with the many exhibits on glaciers and to learn about the flora and fauna of Iceland.
Driving in Iceland
You need to take driving seriously in Iceland and become familiar with the website: www.road.is They have a great interactive map that shows you the road conditions within the hour. I’d recommend hiring a 4WD if you want to venture any further than the Golden Circle route from October to May. But be warned – the Reykjavik airport is very small and there are very few rental cars for pick up at the airport – a couple of the big companies have counters – but I didn’t see where their cars were. So book your car ahead and allow plenty of time to pick it up.
The roads are well marked on Google or Maps but you’ll need a SIM tuned into the local 4G network to track your route and check www. road.is site every hour as Iceland weather changes every hour – which caught us out on one occasion, when we were driving across the Snæfellness peninsula on road 54 from Búðir to Grundarfjörḏur. When we left the valley floor it was sunny but as we got higher up the summit pass (we didn’t know it was a summit pass – no elevation on our map and no signs on the road indicating such) the wind was blowing great swathes of snow across the road which reduced visibility to 10cm. The Yellow poles marking the edge of the road are every 3 metres, so we were driving totally blind (and on the wrong side of the road most of the time) – only luck got us through. Our host at our accommodation kindly showed us the local Iceland road map app (above) and whilst the road was marked orange (warning) when we crossed later it was marked red (closed).
The thermal springs/rivers/ponds
Iceland has a real focus on their thermal springs which is why we first planned to go there as we’ve always seen the stunning photos of the Blue Lagoon.
Interestingly, the Blue Lagoon happened by accident as a by product of the thermal power plant in Svartsengi. The locals started bathing in the pools of water running off from the plant and discovered that the water had healing qualities. They turned the pools into Icelands biggest tourist attraction so it was a big deal that it was closed when we were there and the tour companies had to scramble to offer trips to the smaller thermal pools. We chose to go to the Secret Lagoon (see pic) in the little town of Flúðir but were shocked by how busy it was in both the change rooms and the pool, which detracted immensely from the experience. We had another thwarted attempt at soaking in the Hot river – see Hveragerði below. But we did have a lovely walk around the Seltun geothermal area (no bathing allowed here as water too hot!) which is on the Reykjanesskagi peninsula just 40 km from Reykjavík. The solfataras (bubbling mud pools) and fumaroles,(steaming hot springs) are very lively and the suphur has painted the rocks a beautiful range of ochre, brick red and biscuit (see pics).
Towns and areas we explored in Iceland
Selfoss (about 45 mins from Reykjavik – a service town of 7,000 people on the famous tourist ‘Golden circle road). People trek to Selfoss for the hot dog van ‘Pylsu Vagninn’- we thought we’d better find out what the fuss was about and parked and walked to the van to order (couldn’t work out why everyone was doing drive through… until we discovered the arctic wind made it impossible to eat outdoors so we had to gabble ours up with frozen fingers! ). Not our fav but gotta try the local dishes!
The little seaside village of Eyrarbakki which is about 15 mins south of Selfoss on the coast –we had a walk along the black sand beach in gale force arctic winds admiring the contrast between the black sand and the green Atlantic Sea and the white frozen mountains.
The Reykjanes peninsula about 30 mins west of Selfoss – we drove towards Grundavik (the seaside town shut due to the exploding lava around it) and then north up to the beautiful big (9km) lake Kleifarvatn -the largest lake on the Reykjanes Peninsula. The road winds up and around the edge of the lake providing good views and some access to the beaches along its shore. Very pretty indeed.
Hveragerði – 45 km from Reykjavik, Hveragerði has about 3,000 people and a huge geothermal activity area and a 5000-year-old lava field. There’s lots of little the hot springs dotted around the town including the big Hveragerdi Geothermal Park but we opted for the more adventurous journey which involved a 7km hike up the Reykjadalur valley on icy cliff-hanging paths that we were nearly blown off by gusts of wind to reach a naturally heated river where you can… “bathe in the warm waters surrounded by breathtaking scenery.”
We reached the first bathing pools and there was no way you could strip down in the icy cold winds – you’d catch hyperthermia, so we turned back and had the ‘pic-nic’ we’d packed (along with our bathers) back in the base hut along with a hot bowl of soup and tea.
Golden Circle sights:
We did our own version of this popular ‘circle of sights’ starting with the 50 minute drive up to Thingvellir National Park – this is a great park for hiking but most of the hikes are only accessible in summe. Þingvellir (as they say in ‘Island’) was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2004 for its cultural value to the world – but the thing the sites don’t tell you is that it’s almost impassable in winter -spring! So, we drove on after a brief stop at the info centre and headed to the famous ‘Geysir Geothermal Area’. Well it turns out there is only one still erupting geyser in the area – the Strokkur (The Churn), which erupts at regular intervals every 10 minutes or so – but the most activity was at the huge info centre – café that was overrun with tourist busses. We took a short walk in the howling, icy wind to the Geysir and strategically placed ourselves up wind as you were downstream you’d get soaked and with the ice chill you’d freeze in minutes. We were lucky enough to see two eruptions from a safe distance and it was pretty cool. But the geyser went sideways due to the wind rather than up so it was different to many of the tourist shots that shows it shooting 30m in the air.
Kerid Crater: We didn’t visit Kerid on our Golden circle day but it is usually included so adding it in here. We did a side trip to the Kerid Crater after visiting Hveragerði as its only another 25kms north west from the town. The crater is on the ‘Golden circle’ tour But, to be honest it is probably one sight you could miss (I guess we have some pretty impressive craters back home in Australia – like the Mt Gambier Blue pools that are more impressive). You have to pay a fee to ‘visit’ – which is basically to walk around and look down at the crater – which was frozen when we were there and the winds were so stong and cold you could only grab a quick photo before returning to your car. Kerið, is a volcanic crater lake and is 6,500 years old – the caldera is 55 m deep, 170 m wide, and 270 m across, and is made up of a lovely red volcanic rock.
Next stop was to see the Gullfoss (‘Golden Falls’), Iceland’s most iconic waterfall – in the Hvítá river canyon and yes this was spectacular. We braved the insanely strong icy winds to walk down to the viewing platform to see the waterfall’s two stages. The first, shorter cascade is 11 meters tall whilst the second drop is 21 meters. The canyon walls on each sides are up to 70 meters high so the Gullfossgjúfur canyon is quite deep and was formed by a glacier moving through a long time ago.
After Gullfoss we drove on another 30 mins to stop at the Fridheimar Tomato and Horse Farm, for a cup of their famous tomatoe soup. The restaurant was booked out but we found a spot in the bar and shared a big mug of soup and a generously large baguette. This place puts on horse shows in summer and has a lot of competition ponies which you can pat.
Snaefellness Peninsula
We drove northwest from Reykjavik about 2.5 hours up to the remote and stunning Snaefellness peninsula passing through a couple of interesting towns along the way (listed below). We couldn’t get out to the Snæfellsjökull National Park and the towns of Rif and Olefsk as a blizzard blew in making the roads impassable. We mistakenly took the high mountain pass road from just past seal beach at Snaefellsbaer over to Grundarfördur. Avoid this road if you can. This peninsula really is stunning and so remote and different to the Reykjavik area. 75% of it and its sights are inaccessible in Winter-Spring but we still saw enough to make the trip worthwhile and it really was the journey not the destination that was so awesome. The mountains here are so high and mighty and the landscape so frozen and white you really get a sense of how extreme life can be in Iceland! Here’s a summary of the towns we visited:
Akranes is the first town on the Ring Road (Route 1) on the peninsula and you reach it after going through a six Km tunnel that goes underneath the Hvaljjordur fjord. You exit the tunnel and turn left and you’ll find a little seaside town (2,000 pop) with a lovely 1km long sandy grey beach – Langisandur beach one of only 3 beaches in Iceland with the Blue Flag environmental certification (for water purity).
We enjoyed a walk along the beach (mostly)out of the wind. We stumbled across the Guðlaugu, a hot pool located in the rocks above the beach. Two big men (Vikings?) were soaking then were alarmed to see them jump out of the hot pool, run down the beach and dive into the water – they stayed in for about 5 minutes (see first photo above) despite warnings that more than a minute or two causes hypothermia!
Borgarnes is the next town along the Ring Road and there’s another engineering feat to get here – you cross the second-longest bridge in Iceland. Luckily it wasn’t very high! This is a small town with a nice harbour front for a stretch of the legs – but at Easter a lot was shut.
Ytri Tunga (seal beach). This little pull out off the main road has a paid parking lot and gives you access to a walk along the beach to see habor and grey seals swimming or bathing on the rocky, grey sand beach. It’s also on the migration route of large blue whales and sperm whales though not when we were there – although we saw the old bones of a whale!
Grundarfjörður is the small town (population 875)we stayed in for the night (in the Old Post Office Guesthouse). There’s a lovely church and Iceland’s best coffee shop – Valerias run by a Columbian who roasts his own coffee on site – but the biggest feature of the town is that it has Kirkjufell on its doorstep – and right out our bedroom window!!
Kirkjufell is a 463 m high hill on the north coast of Iceland’s Snæfellsnes peninsula, near the town of Grundarfjörður. It is claimed to be the most photographed mountain in the country alongside the Kirkjufellsfoss (waterfall) that lies opposite the hill. Here is what it looks like in summer – as we could hardly see it buried beneath the snow and the path to access the falls was too icy to navigate.
Stykkishólmur, is about 30 mins up the road from Grund and has some pretty, colourful old houses, and Breiðafjörður bay filled with lots of little islands (they used to row the sheep out on boats to graze on them). The people of Stykkishólmur are pioneers in recycling in Iceland and the community is certified by the Green Globe environmental sustainability label. The eiderdown museum is also here, and it honours the eider duck and methods of eiderdown “farming” in Iceland. The eider is the layer beneath the female duck’s tougher exterior feathers used keep her eggs warm. I remember having eiderdowns before ‘doonas’ came along!
We took a hike up to the Súgandisey lighthouse from the harbor gives you a nice view over the town and out to sea and the surrounding islands.
Some fun facts and observations about Iceland:
Sparse Population: With a population of only 350,000 people, strewn across 103,000 km2, it is the most sparsely populated country in the world with about 3 people per square kilometre.
Ever-changing Geography: The low and sparse population has a lot to do with the fact that so much of the country is not fit for human settlement – 10% is taken up by glaciers, the rest by erupting lava crevices, geysers (the most geysers in one land mass in the world including the first one ever spotted/recorded) and volcanoes or remnants of old lava flows (there’s 30 volcanic regions in the country!) 25% of the land is covered with volcanoes, and there’s usually one erupting, abut to erupt or spewing forth lava at any given time. When we flew in we could see the towering plumes of smoke from the lava streaming from a crack in the Mt. Hagafell and Stori-Skigfell volcanoes north of the ‘beach’ town of Grindavik and close to the airport. This is the flow that has closed the Blue Lagoon for the past couple of months (see Thermal bathing for more) There are very few trees (they were all cut down by the Vikings and struggled to grow back). Stone towers – you’ll see pyramids of stones piled up along the roadside on your way from the airport in to Reykjavik and apparently the legend goes that if you make a pyramid out of stones it will change into a troll and bring luck.
Peaceful: Iceland is the only NATO country not to have an army, air force or navy. It has a Crisis Response Unit (ICRU), a small, peacekeeping force of about 200 staff who do not carry arms or wear a uniform. They have about 600 Police (1/4 women) who do not carry guns.
No McDonalds! Their favourite takeaway food is hot dogs which they sell from street vans in parking lots. These are basically sliced fried frankfurts in a small roll with creamy mayonnaise (they use mayonnaise on everything including nachos and tacos) and choice of toppings from cheese to corn chips to fried onions). They also love their frozen pizza (like the Norwegians).
Free and Fair. Iceland was ranked 4th in the 2019 Index of Economic Freedom, and ranked high for “labour freedom” and “government integrity” and Iceland is number one in the world on the Global Peace Index and takes the top spot in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report. Iceland had the first democratically voted female president. There’s low poverty, high pacifism and no casinos and v. low crime only 2 people killed in Iceland in all of 2021. Biggest crime is traffic offences – they police their car parks with cameras, and you have to download 2 different parking apps and must use them or else.
No fauna-fear. There’s no snakes, no bears, no mosquitos and no poisonous bugs – biggest threat is the sperm whale! And volcanoes of course.
No trains. The country has no trains or railway system – just a bus system and lots of tour operators and rental cars.
Funky and punky. One of the most popular museums in Iceland is the Phallological museum – no guesses what’s on display there – and the punk museum which is in a public toilet! Famous punk-musicians Sigur Ros and Björk (we love them both)
Tongue-twister language. The street and place names are crazy – we can’t pronounce them at all (neither can our iPhone Maps Aussie navigator) – the longest word found in Icelandic is: vaðlaheiðarvegavinnuverkfærageymsluskúraútidyralyklakippuhringur. It took me a good few weeks to work out how to spell the name of the capital of Iceland and I never got the hang of the arrangement of letters and special characters (there’s 32 letters in the alphabet) in the Icelandic language.
The official language of Iceland is Icelandic which is a mix of northern Germany and the Old Norse language. However, most people born after 1980 speak English.We love to embrace the language wherever we go and learn at least the basics and use it as often as possible.
Easy names. Perhaps they recognised the challenging street names and decided to make people names a tad easier? Names of people are strictly controlled by the ‘naming committee’ so there’s lots of common first names (Bjorn, Magnus, Lars for boys, Gudrin, Anna, Heiga for girls) , and few use their surname (which is usually made up of the father’s first name with -son for boys and dottir for girls) – no identity issues here…
Tough ponies. There’s apparently sheep and cows in Iceland but all we saw were Icelandic horses – small, chunky with long thick coats and manes. They are everywhere in big numbers and huddled together in strong winds with no shelter – whilst apparently all the sheep and cows are in barns. They are famous for their unique gate, the ‘tölt’ (where only 1 hoof is on the ground at a time) and they are very ‘pure-bred’ as they have not been mixed with other breeds for over 1,000 years.
Free heating. Over 80% of homes in Iceland are heated by geothermal activity and the hot water and electricity is all generated by natural heat from the earth – available free to all residents.
