I think this is a thing I’m going to try to make a regular feature – depending on how much time I spend camping in Iceland in future. Anyway, last year I talked about the campsites I stayed on and I want to do it again. Did I go round and take photos specially for this post? Nope! Never even thought about writing this one! Let’s see what I’ve got.
Þingvellir
There are four campsites at Þingvellir. One is right next to the visitor centre – that’s the one on the crossroads as you drive into the rift valley, not the one at the viewpoint. The next two are just down the road, on the other side of the crossroads, and the last one is down by the lake somewhere. I opted for the one on the right as you drive into the valley, Syðri-Leirar. There was someone playing loud music on Fagrabrekka, the one on the other side of the road, which is tents-only. Vatnskot, the one by the lake, is also tents-only. Campers at the two Leirars.
Nyrðri-Leirar, the one by the visitor centre, is the one with all the facilities. There’s the cafe, there’s washing machines, two lots of showers and toilets and apparently even some kind of chapel. Syðri-Leirar, where I stayed, has showers and toilets and washing-up sinks. They’re quite functional – I didn’t go in the showers but the toilets are unisex, open straight onto the campsite, with lights on a sensor and their own little sinks. I can’t remember whether there was hot water in them but there was that blue paper for drying your hands. It’s a nice enough place but give or take these huts, there’s little more than field here.
You pay at the visitor centre, 1300 ISK (£8) for one person in one tent. I’ve already gone through and done the paragraph about price for each and this one is really jumping out as really cheap. Þingvellir is the heart of Iceland. I know my particular bit of site was pretty basic but according to the map, there were plenty of facilities at Nyrðri-Leirar. Maybe the lack of facilities at the two tent-only sites drags the amount of facilities per camper down and therefore the price they feel they can charge averages out lower. That implies there’s a different price depending on what field you choose. There isn’t. I mean that if you get these facilities at this one but virtually nothing at these two, that averages out lower and therefore they charge less. £8 per night really sounds pretty low, especially for the National Park, though.
Systragil
Ah, Systragil was lovely! Google Maps says that the campsite in the middle of Akureyri is closed which is why I simply searched for “campsite near Akureyri” before setting off. Systragil is up in the mountains, 45-odd minutes outside the city if you take the old road, 15-20 minutes by tunnel. You turn off the Ring Road and drive for five minutes down a valley until you have fairly steep mountains on each side and then Systragil is in its own little wooded valley off the side of it.
It’s a really nice site! There are three levels, with its own little stream and waterfall bubbling away, caravans that clearly live here at least all summer, nice grass, landlady in at 7.30am to clean the facilities (and collect payment from anyone who was out the evening before when she came round). It’s not quite as peaceful as it sounds – that little road is surprisingly busy but it’s off the Ring Road and it’s away from the city and being surrounded by trees is such a rarity in Iceland.
I think you get quite a good deal here. Yes, it’s a small campsite. It has one toilet block with two toilets and one shower for the entire site but it also has an open area at the other end with sinks for washing up, a washing machine and a hairdryer. Now, I would not expect to find a hairdryer on most campsites, let alone one this size. Þingvellir was cheaper but that campsite is relatively basic – or perhaps I just didn’t get to know Nyrðri-Leirar enough. Anyway, Systragil is 1,700 ISK (£10.47) for one person in one tiny tent. The website says showers are extra – 2 x 100kr for five minutes of hot water. I didn’t have a shower there because I was at the Forest Lagoon until 11pm and I set off as early as I could in the morning. It’s rare for showers to be extra in Iceland these days.
Bjarg
I love Bjarg. I camped here in 2013 and I thought it was closed and that I’d have to stay at the campsite at the other end of the village. But no!
Bjarg is at Myvatn, right opposite the little supermarket/fuel station, Vinbudin and fish & chip shop, which means it’s within easy walking distance of just about all the facilities in the region. It overlooks the lake and tents can spread out as much as they like, as there’s no vehicles on the grass. Campervans park up on the hard stuff at the far end of the site and as far more people have vans than put up with tents, the camping end is pretty quiet. You’ll get ducks quacking around and I suppose the Ring Road passes directly above but you don’t really notice it.
As a con, it’s quite expensive. Second most expensive that I stayed at. But it’s well-maintained, it has two toilet blocks, hot showers, a special wooden structure with canvas roof for eating, a drying shed, free wifi and soft green grass as well as being well-situated. It’s well worth its price, which is 2,400 ISK (£14.77 per night) and still a lot cheaper than finding one of the few hotels in the area.
Egilsstaðir
Ah, Egilsstaðir. I stayed here in 2015 and liked it. It was sunny, I sprawled outside my tent and enjoyed the cliff that runs along the back of the campsite and I had a vague memory of a building with free hot chocolate.
Slight changes in 2023. So many people camp – by which I mean so many people hire campervans – that the campsite all but sells out. I sat in the building charging my phone and booking things online, right under the reception hatch and heard several times “we have pitch [a], pitch [b] and pitch [c] available, which would you like?”. Evidently this place can sell out. Surely there’s an overflow field? You can’t turn people away – apart from anything else, anyone with a van will just park for free in the big car park out the front.
So those of us who turn up with small tents got put on the field behind the building. This is about the size of two pitches, perhaps just one, and by the time I got up in the morning, there were ten or twelve tents squished into this space, festival-style. I wanted an actual pitch, I wanted space to sit outside without my feet touching my neighbours’ tent, to walk across to the toilets without falling over eight guylines in the dim light of 2am in east Iceland. At the very least, if you’re going to cram us into the small back field, I don’t want to be paying the same as the people who get a large pitch to themselves.
Pros of Egilsstaðir: nice indoor building, with multiple washers and dryers, hot showers, reception apparently open 24/7, seating area, wifi, electricity, indoor & outdoor washing-up areas, vending machines etc. It’s one of the few sites where you can book online in advance – mostly you have to just turn up and hope there’s space and to be fair, there has always been space so far, especially for tents. But if you’re making your plans in advance, I like that this is one site where you can be sure of your camping space.
Cons: I’m just having trouble getting past the fact that us tent-folk were crammed into the back field. There’s a restaurant/hotel/hostel thing next door, literally in the same building, and children kept running out of their back door, across the tent field and to the couple of swings that comprise the playground. The real pitches don’t have to worry about children running, yelling and damaging their tents.
2,250 ISK (£13.86) for one night is not a bad price. Come on, it’s not a bad price at all. But I resent that it’s the same as the people on the real field were paying when we were being treated like second class citizens.
Skaftafell
I have fond memories of Skaftafell. In 2023… well, I guess I arrived tired and hadn’t eaten enough. I’d forgotten, despite camping here twice in the past, that the soil is very thin and it’s all stones. You need a mallet to get tent pegs in here and I didn’t have one. So far, all I’d needed was a bit of pressure from a foot. Not at Skaftafell. I hammered at them with a rock and still could only get my pegs in just far enough that they stood up by themselves. Between the difficulty getting the tent up, the fact that I had to walk the length of the campsite twice before I’d managed it (to pay; to find a toilet block that was open) and the need for food, I genuinely threw myself down on the ground and cried.
But.
I do like Skaftafell, once the tent is up. It’s got eight fields, set out in rows of four. Some of them have electricity and you’re requested to leave those for the campervans. It has the facilities for the National Park – the visitor centre, the cafe/restaurant, the meeting place for several adventure companies taking people out on day tours. It’s an easy walk down to Skaftafellsjökull. There’s views over Europe’s biggest glacier. It’s a really nice place to have as your base for a few days while you explore the south coast.
It’s also by far the most expensive campsite I stayed at. It was 3,000 ISK (£18.48) for just me for one night. Interestingly, that depends on where you pitch and what you’re camping in, which is something that hasn’t applied anywhere else. My small tent should have been on pitches E, F, G or H where you’re not allowed to take your car. I camped on D, where you are allowed your car. The website says without electricity, this is 5,000 ISK. Well… by them not specifying this, I managed to save 2,000 ISK.
It’s still expensive but that includes parking, because Skaftafell is a rare place in Iceland where you have to pay to park. Don’t pay separately, they give you a code on your receipt when you pay for camping and you enter it into the red parking machine – not the white ones! – to show that you don’t have to pay for parking. It’s also by far the biggest campsite in Iceland, apparently. It has two entire blocks of showers with hot water, an entire room of washing machines, it has food trucks, it’s got the National Park’s visitor centre/gift shop and restaurant and although the fields themselves are just fields, it’s probably got more facilities than the average campsite. I’d stay here again but I’d eat before I try to put up the tent and I’d pack a mallet.
Vik
Last but not least, Vik. Vik’s campsite is just off the main road, dug into the ground a bit. It feels like it has an earth wall around it but actually, the road that encircles the campsite is at the level of the top of that wall, so it’s actually sunken. It has earth walls dividing it into two zones and more earth walls dividing up electric pitches for camper vans.
It’s a slightly odd place. Took me forever to find reception. As you enter, there’s an l-shaped building on the left, which is the washing/shower/toilet/possibly laundry facilities. On the right is an octagonal building. Most of this is a large indoor seating space. It looks like a restaurant except that there’s a kitchen area inside. Indeed, here is where the campers can cook, sit inside, charge their stuff, use the wifi. If you walk all the way around that building, you’ll find reception. Of course, it’s only a few steps if you go the other way but the layout of the campsite makes it intuitive to walk around clockwise. Reception also has a small gift shop.
Oddly, showers are apparently extra here. I was asked if I wanted showers included and I declined, since I planned to go to the pool, where showering is non-optional. You used to have to sometimes buy shower tokens or cards – when I was at Skaftafell in 2016 I bought a shower card from the machine outside the visitor centre but even there, it’s now included.
There’s a hotel and a narrow two-storey row of apartments between the campsite and the Ring Road. That means the roadside stopping area is virtually on the other side of the road. There’s a pizza restaurant there now, two fuel stations, the Icewear souvenir outlet and a supermarket, all within a five minute walk of your tent. Once, all the tourists would flood into the N1 for their hotdog and I suspect now they don’t. One thing that did strike me about Vik is that I’ve heard it has a population of 300, which seems very small for the biggest settlement on the south coast. Standing by reception, using the wifi and looking out over what looked like a car park full of big white vans, it struck me that this campsite probably triples the population of the village, even if most people only stay one night.
And as for price – well, it comes fourth out of six on price at 1,950 ISK (£12.05). More expensive than Þingvellir and Systragil – Þingvellir is the one that’s throwing me out. It just feels so cheap. Yes, Vik has more facilities than Systragil. It’s a better location, in that there’s all that stuff on the other side of the road, although Systragil has the better location in that it’s in a wooded valley in the mountains, miles from anywhere. I don’t think it’s unreasonable that it’s a little more expensive than Systragil. It just blows my mind that Þingvellir is so much cheaper!
Conclusion
Which was my favourite? Oh, that’s hard. There’s good things about all of them. Þingvellir is at Þingvellir! Systragil felt lovely and peaceful and off-grid. Bjarg is just nice. Egilsstaðir has great facilities. Skaftafell ditto plus a great view. By process of elimination, that leaves Vik as my least favourite, which was nothing particularly special. But equally, there’s nothing wrong with Vik and in fact, Egilsstaðir was my least favourite because of the little tent field. Favourite… oh, let’s say Bjarg. How can I choose any site except the one where ducks quack around the field in the morning?
Yes, Vik as least favourite on paper, Egilsstaðir as least favourite in reality but again, they’re both fine. They’re both perfectly good campsites in convenient locations with good facilities – and perhaps more importantly, they’re the only ones located within walking distance of things like supermarkets and swimming pools. If you said you’d stayed at either, I’d say something along the lines of “Oh yeah, that’s a good campsite”.
Is there a bad campsite in Iceland? At a push, I might say Hrafntinnusker because even in late June, there’s thick snow up there and the toilets are non-flushing drop ones which stink and there are no showers. But outside the highest bit of the Highlands, I don’t think I’ve found a bad one yet.