Because I can blog about Iceland forever, here’s a post containing things no one mentions and things I see pop up over and over again – 20 things you need to know before you go to Iceland!
1. 99% of international flights come in to Keflavík airport. 99% of domestic flights go into Reykjavík. It’s an hour’s drive between the two. Check exactly where your connection is and leave absolute minimum two to three hours between landing at Kef and flying from Reykjavík and three to four if it’s the other way round. More time is better.
2. The weather changes dramatically and regularly. If you’re there in winter, you’ll probably want warmer clothes than the internet advises. Leave the sleek cashmere sweaters, leggings and fashion boots at home. This is when you want big warm fluffy layers that leave you looking like the Michelin man. It’ll be warmer and definitely less icy in the summer but keep a warm layer and a waterproof handy.
3. Unless you’re going in winter, you don’t need a 4×4. The Ring Road is a pretty straight flat tarmac road. The F roads, the Interior roads, are harder than you probably anticipate, zigzagged by ferocious glacial rivers that you have to ford without getting swept away and hire car insurance very rarely covers you to try it. Plus the roads are often virtually non-existent. Satnavs can only help with this so much. For your everyday tourist needs, get a cheaper car and for exciting excursions into the Highlands, your options range from a public bus to a private monster jeep. Icelanders have some really good Interior drivers. Use them. In the winter, roads are likely to be icy so consider your driving ability before hiring even a 4×4 (which will come with winter tyres). A lot of roads are closed in bad weather, including segments of the Ring Road.
4. Driving off-road is illegal and permanently damages the landscape. Climbing over fences is often dangerous and often permanently damages the landscape. Please don’t be the sort of tourist everyone hates by doing that sort of thing. Iceland is a natural wonderland and tourists treat it like something to crush like a spoilt toddler. Stay safe and stay good. You’ll still get amazing Instagram photos from the right side of the roped-off bit, I promise. Iceland’s just that beautiful.
5. You can race around the Ring Road in three days if you really want but I’d take a week absolute minimum to give you time to stop and see things. Ten days or two weeks would perhaps be better. If you’re going in winter – which is late August to late June in the Highlands and October to April in the north – leave enough time to factor in snowstorms and road closures.
6. The Blue Lagoon is great, go there if you want as long as you’ve got a pre-booked ticket – you can’t just turn up anymore. You don’t have to listen to the Travellers Are Better Than Tourists folk who tell you you’re too special and important for something so touristy. It’s great (expensive, though!) But local pools are also great. Usually outside, always warm, almost invariably with at least one hotpot and often several, all for under £5. The compulsory naked shower is a bit more open but at pools in small settlements you’ll probably have the changing rooms to yourself anyway.
7. Eyjafjallajökull isn’t as difficult to say as you think. Break it into its three parts. Eyja – fjalla – jökull.
- Eyja is ay as in day, a as in Fanta. AY-a.
- Fjalla is fee as in paying a fee and then the alla features a sound that doesn’t exist in English. It’s similar to the Welsh double-l. At-la is close enough for a mangled-mouthed tourist. Fee-AT-la.
- And jökull features that same double-L sound. Yer as in “yer a wizard, Harry”. Cur as in the beginning of curdle. And tl as in the end of skittle. YER-cur-tl.
Practice each bit separately and then put them together. AY-a fee-AT-la YER-cur-tl. It’s not quite how it sounds from an Icelander but a tourist who can manage more than “Eee*giggle*dunnoforeign” will be smiled upon.
8. Do not built rock piles. They are stupid and they are regarded as environmental vandalism. If you really must build them, dismantle them afterwards and return the rocks to where you found them.
9. Iceland is incredibly overtouristed. There will be a ring three people deep around Strokkur and you’ll be fighting your way to a view of the major waterfalls. Tour buses are around between mid morning and mid afternoon so things should be quieter earlier and later in the day.
10. Hotels are expensive and get booked up quickly. In the summer, camping is a great cheap way to sleep. Campsites have hot showers, some have their own hotpots and there’s a campsite at every settlement and every major sight. One day I’ll camp at Geysir and watch eruptions on my own late at night.
11. Supermarkets are a thing. People ask me “where do you eat?” because eating out isn’t a thing that really happens in my life. I go to supermarkets and buy food. I make sandwiches. I eat star-shaped crisps in the car. You won’t find much in the way of eating out once you leave Reykjavík. You certainly won’t find “authentic little restaurants”. You’ll find lamb hotdogs and burgers at roadhouses, small informal restaurants attached to farms and greenhouses and the occasional Subway or KFC.
12. You can drink the tap water in Iceland. They really don’t like it when you buy bottled water. The hot water sometimes smells of sulphur and you don’t want to drink that. I’ve done it and suffered the consequences. But the cold water is fresh and clean and perfect. If you have a mixer tap, run the cold until you can’t smell the sulphur anymore.
13. Those hardy fluffy horses you’ll see by the side of the road are horses. Never call them ponies. I know they’re small and a lot of individuals don’t meet minimum horse height but the breed is classified as horse and Icelanders take offence at them being called ponies. By all means, rub their noses if they come over but please don’t feed them without the owner’s permission. These are the horses that the first settlers brought over in the 9th and 10th centuries. Please do picture the Vikings riding these small fluffy horses and have a giggle.
14. The Northern Lights are unreliable. Be prepared for them to not show themselves. You need it to be cold and dark, you need the weather to cooperate and give you cloudless skies but you also need the Lights to be in the mood. Icelandic tour operators almost always offer a free second try if you don’t see anything so don’t save it for your last night. “Northern Lights And…” tours are good because even if you don’t see lights, you’ll come back cold and tired at 1am having done something fun. They usually rebook you onto a standard lights hunt, by the way. You don’t get to do the fun thing a second time for free.
15. If your car has a CD player, grab one of the Icelandair Hot Springs compilations in a roadhouse or supermarket. They usually come in card packets with a concentric circle design on the front in ugly colours. There’s a lot more to Icelandic music than Björk and Sígur Rós and these CDs will give you a taste.
Hot Spring Kerið (my favourite of the set, I think) on Spotify
16. Pick up a copy of the Reykjavík Grapevine. It’s a free English-language newspaper available all over the place which will tell you what’s going on in both the Icelandic national consciousness and in terms of gigs, places to eat etc.
17. A really good souvenir is a book. Icelandic bookshops are also great souvenir shops & they’ll have a huge selection of English language books. Some of them are useful things like Thermal Pools in Iceland, some are modern Scandi-Noir fiction and some are sagas. I recommend a saga. Egil’s Saga is probably the best – action, drama, murder, poetry, werewolves and lost treasure. My personal favourite is the Saga of the Völsungs which is shorter and more readable and contains the original of pretty much every modern fantasy trope. It was written somewhere around the 13th century and it features the original dragon on its hoard, the original cursed ring, the original broken sword reforged plus incest, a multiple-years-long pregnancy, Odin messing with the mortals, infanticide, scorned Valkyries and a battle of insults from the deck of a ship.
18. There are two volcanoes in Iceland that are, to the best of our scientific knowledge, overdue. Hekla, which goes up around every ten years, last erupted in 2000. Katla, which goes up around every hundred years, last erupted in 1918. Hekla is likely to be pretty. Katla is likely to be a disaster – like Eyjafjallajökull but a lot bigger. If Hekla starts, I’m on the next plane out to see it. If Katla starts, no one’s getting on a plane in the vicinity of Europe for quite a while.
19. If you buy anything big, you can reclaim the tax at the airport. You’ll be given the form at time of purchase. Keep the receipt. The reclaim takes place in departures, after security. They’ve changed the airport around since I was last there but it used to be on the right, next to the jewellers and the electronics shop. They might give you the refund in cash so be prepared for suddenly having a pocketful of currency you’re about to be unable to spend.
20. Here are 4 blog posts and a series to read about Iceland before you go.
• How do the lockers work at the Blue Lagoon?
• How to take photos of the Northern Lights for non-photographers
• The entire 26-part A-Z of Iceland series
• 48 hours in Reykjavik
• Rauðfeldar: one of Iceland’s better-kept secrets