The first time you hear the words “camping” and “Iceland” in the same sentence, it doesn’t sound appealing. When you’ve been there in the summer and seen how solid-roof accommodation both fills up and becomes stupidly expensive, suddenly camping in Iceland looks like a better idea.
Here are a few things to know about camping in Iceland
Wild camping
First and foremost, wild camping is illegal in Iceland. And it’s not one of those arbitrary laws that you can just ignore if you’re discrete enough. Iceland’s nature is fragile – walk on the moss and the damage you do will linger for decades. Pitch a tent on the moss and the damage you do will linger for decades. Use the local flora as a toilet and it’ll be there for months. Go to a real campsite. There are hundreds of the things. You’ll be able to enjoy nature and have an authentic outdoors experience without inadvertently doing long-term damage.
Campsites
Camping in Iceland is one of the few things that’s pretty cheap. tjalda.is gives prices as averaging 1500-2000kr per night (that’s £10-13/$12-16) and I know prices increase over time but I’m 90% sure I’ve never paid anywhere near that much.
Icelandic campsites always have toilets – because the alternative is an environmental catastrophe – and showers, usually hot showers, and often a hotpot. Showers are often paid for. At Skaftafell you can buy shower cards from reception or out of hours, you can use a bank card to buy them from a machine on the wall outside reception. Other places have coin-operated showers, although they seem to be being phased out in favour of showers operated by a QR code. Generally you can buy shower tickets from reception with either cash or card. And they’re hot. Iceland has endless geothermal hot water so campsites have the luxury of hot showers and hot washing-up water. In the unlikely event there aren’t any hot showers, there will probably be a local swimming pool pretty close by and those will have hot showers.
A minor downside is that sometimes the ground is rocky and knobbly, which sometimes mean it’s a bit uncomfortable to sleep on and sometimes there’s a soft coat of grass on top but it’s a pig to get tent pegs in. Oh, and sometimes it’s really windy and you need to put small boulders on top of your pegs to make sure the wind doesn’t tear them out of the ground and collapse the tent. Get some extra-tough pegs, storm pegs, something like that. You might well never use them – I’ve never used mine – but if the weather gets really bad, you’ll appreciate them.
And did I mention hotpots? It’s not at every campsite, by a long way, but they’re more common over there than in the UK. There’s that abundant hot water again – every swimming pool has a hotpot or two but there are enough left over that quite a few campsites have them and if there are hotpots, they’ll be included in the price of camping. I used to particularly enjoy the one at Fossatún, before they turned the campsite into a glampsite.
Keeping warm
Sometimes it’s relatively warm in Iceland. When I first camped, in the summer of 2013, I got into my tent relatively early in the evening before I got cold and managed to stay toasty even in a 3-season bag. In fact, sunny mornings made the tent unbearably hot. Since then I’ve found it less warm. Generally, even in summer, it’s a good idea to have thermals and a hat and the warmest sleeping bag you can carry. A hot shower before getting in can be a very good idea. Hot drinks make all the difference. If you don’t have a stove with you, some campsites have a drinks machine in reception but there will probably be a roadhouse or petrol station or something of the kind pretty close by and that will almost definitely have something.
Huts
If you get really cold or you want the wildness of camping without the discomfort of sleeping on the ground under a sheet of fabric, some campsites have a hut, particularly the ones up in the Highlands. Some of them get booked up months, if not years, in advance, especially the ones along the Laugavegur Trail but sometimes bad weather stops people arriving and that leaves unexpected spaces. As for the more lowland ones, the ones in villages along the Ring Road, they’re a little less prone to being full. As in the case of Fossatún, some campsites offer glamping pods as well, there’s a campsite in the west that offers greenhouses, although they’re literally a warm roof over your head and you still sleep on the ground.
Here’s a map showing all the places I’ve camped in Iceland so far and a miniature review of each of them:
So, I think that’s it for camping in Iceland. If you have any questions, fire away and I’ll see if I can answer them.
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