By now, my entire Iceland Summer 2023 video series is out – if you want to watch it, the playlist is here (please do go and watch it! I’m very new to this and every view counts!). While I was making it, and because I had some time-consuming stuff to do over summer and early autumn, I spent a lot of time with someone else’s Iceland Ring Road videos on my other screen and I very quickly noticed a few patterns – namely that everyone goes to the same places and skips the same places. So I thought I’d do an Iceland Itinerary According to YouTube.
I’ve plotted various things on this map. Blue dots are the places you’re likely to see in Iceland vlogs. Yellow places are the ones I’d personally add to my own itinerary.
Hire a camper van
First up, if you’re going to drive the Ring Road and film it for YouTube, you have to hire a camper van. Now, I’m not against this in principle. It’s difficult to be spontaneous if you’ve got bookings for hotels or guesthouses and camper vans are a great way to be able to stop pretty much wherever you like.
My tips: I personally find a camper van for one a very expensive way of doing this. I hire the smallest cheapest car I can and take a tent with me. It’s just as flexible and a lot cheaper – but yes, it’s not as comfortable or convenient and it’s not something I’d want to do outside of July and August.
The Golden Circle
The main problem I have with people driving the Ring Road is that they miss out on all the stuff you get from doing any of it with a guide. The first and most obvious is that no one has any idea how to pronounce anything. You do get a point for attempting it, because I think I’ve said before that nothing annoys me as much as sounding the first letter and then giggling and giving up because “foreign is haaaard” but you get lots of points for attempting to do it correctly – and it makes even me cringe to hear myself say “Deildartunguhver!!” in a video from last year. I know I’m not doing it right but at least I’m making the effort. And yes, “Þingvellir” includes a letter we don’t have in English but if you pronounce it “Pingvellir”, with a P, then I’m probably going to switch the video off. Today I watched a video from someone who quite solemnly welcomed the viewers to “Thing Villa” and then went on to “Selandafoss” (this is supposed to be Seljalandsfoss – only dropped about four syllables there and put the remainder in the wrong order). The second problem is that you don’t get any of the context about these places.
So YouTubers doing the Golden Circle go to Geysir and they go to Gullfoss. They look good on camera, giant fountains of erupting boiling water and a huge waterfall in a deep canyon. But Þingvellir is, perhaps, harder to appreciate if you don’t realise this is the heart of Iceland. It’s where Parliament began in 930 and it’s where national celebrations continue to be held. It’s a great big rift valley, it’s a National Park. It’s a special place. It’s far more culturally important than Geysir or Gullfoss but because it’s not as immediately visually interesting, vloggers overwhelmingly skip it.
My tips: I’ve talked about the Golden Circle so many times. Don’t miss out Þingvellir. You’re also missing Kerið, Faxafoss, Friðheimar, Efstidalur II (my own personal Golden Circle secret that’s not a secret), the Secret Lagoon and Fontana, just to name the obvious stops. If you’re going to copy a YouTuber’s itinerary, keep in mind that there’s so much more to the Golden Circle than they’re showing you.
The South Coast
Next, we take to the South Coast. Now, I admit, if you’re aiming for Vik or Vatnajökull, you haven’t got time to stop everywhere and if you’re trying to tear around the entire country in a week, you don’t have time to add extra days. I suppose I can’t really argue that the South Coast sights YouTube shows us are Seljalandsfoss, Skogafoss and “the Black Sand Beach” – its name is Reynisfjara (Ray-niss-fyar-a), please try to use it occasionally! They’re all good stops and I’d definitely stop at the waterfalls, even today.
The plane wreck at Sólheimasandur used to be in this list but it seems that’s finally falling out of fashion. It’s so weird, there are fashions in places to visit when you go to Iceland. Some will never go out of style and some are relatively new entries.
If you’re going to Reynisfjara, your YouTube guide will probably not mention that it’s incredibly dangerous whereas your real life tour guide absolutely would. Stay well away from the water. You can’t get into much trouble up on the beach or by the cliffs but if there’s a possibility of the water even dampening your toes, you’re too close and I’m not joking, your life is at risk. Those waves are “sneaker waves”. The land drops away very sharply here, which means first that the waves are bigger and more powerful than they look and second that you’re going to be out of your depth within about half a second, being pulled out to sea by something you never thought was a danger. No paddling here, even if the sea looks calm. There are ten thousand signposts and coloured lights for a reason.
My tip: If you’ve got time in your south coast itinerary, make a stop at Seljavallalaug, Iceland’s oldest and wildest swimming pool. Yes, it’s a pool, not a hot spring. Yes, it’s very bare-bones. There are no showers or toilets, the changing facilities are a semi-derelict hut with a muddy floor and one of the doors missing but it’s a nice pool and it’s a very Icelandic experience to swim in it and it used to be very popular on Instagram, if pretty pictures are your thing.
Vik to the East
Once you get past Vik, there are three more stops along this stretch of the South Coast. This is where it gets quieter – a lot of the tourists turn back at Vik because there are no real towns or settlements between Vik on the South Coast and Egilsstaðir out east except Kirkjubæjarklaustur, which is a tiny place, and Höfn, which I’ve only seen acknowledged once or twice by the rare people who want a solid roof over their heads.
Stop one is at Fjaðrárgljúfur, aka the Justin Bieber canyon. It’s a pretty place a relatively short drive from the Ring Road, where a gentle river in a gravel bed meanders up a steep-sided green canyon, whose cliffs wiggle and wave and undulate. Since that music video, Iceland has had to close the canyon a few times because the volume of tourist traffic was overwhelming for an area that’s ecologically delicate.
The next stop is Diamond Beach, known in Icelandic as Breiðamerkursandur (bray-tha, mair-kur, san-dur; use that occasionally too). Actually, there are two Diamond Beaches, one on each side of the river. It’s where the icebergs wash up on the black sand after they’ve floated out of the mouth of the glacial lagoon, Jökulsárlón. There are parking places on both sides and you can cross via the road bridge if you want to sample both sides. Bear in mind a few things. First, you have to pay to park here. Second, the sea isn’t as notoriously dangerous here as it is back at Reynisfjara but I still can’t recommend enough making sure that you don’t get anywhere the water can grab you. Third, the number and quality of “diamonds” on the beach depends entirely on what’s floated out of the lagoon lately and what’s got washed up. Because they’re lying in black sand, they have a tendency to get dirty, which is entirely natural but not so aesthetic.
Then there’s Jökulsárlón itself. That’s another place that seems to be falling out of fashion. Vloggers do go there but it’s a cursory visit usually represented by drone shots. I don’t know when I last saw anyone out on a boat tour on it, not on YouTube. Real life tourists still flock to it. I personally think Jökulsárlón is worth far more time than Diamond Beach.
Last in this region is Stokksnes, an expanse of wet black sand across from Höfn with views of a rather spectacular mountain called Vestrahorn. The wet sand is great for reflections and vloggers love it mostly because it’s fairly quiet here. Tourists in general haven’t discovered Stokksnes yet. Tourists with proper serious photography cameras make the trip out to it, though. Five years ago, it was virtually unknown but now, you haven’t made a real video about Iceland if you haven’t pranced around on Stokksnes beach.
My tips: Spend a bit more time at Jökulsárlón and go out on a boat trip. Obviously, I’m going to recommend the kayaking tour – there’s nothing like getting up close and personal with the ice, and without the noise and diesel fuel scent of either the big amphibian boat or the noisy Zodiacs. If you can make it to Skaftafell to spend the night instead of Vik, it’s a much nicer place and much more scenic for an evening’s filming.
The East
I have yet to see regional capital Egilsstaðir in a vlog (except my own; I did my daily walk there one day this summer). Visitors to the East make two stops.
One is at Seyðisfjörður, a really pretty little village at the end of a long narrow fjord. You’ll know it for the rainbow street and the pretty blue church. The outside world knows it for being where the ferry from mainland Europe comes in once or twice a week. If you’ve only got a day in the east and you want to see a pretty fjordside village, this is a good one to pick.
The other stop is at Stuðlagil, another canyon. This is the straight narrow one with the columnar basalt sides and to get to it, you have to drive out of the east and up across the Ódáðahraun towards the north before turning sharp left onto the 923. Again, it’s very pretty, especially if you’re going to fly a drone down it, but it does seem to appear in every single video.
My tips: give the Eastfjords region a chance. Spend a night or two here, visit some more villages, the lake and climb up to Hengifoss.
The rest
This is the point at which your average vlogger realises that they’re only halfway around the Ring Road but they’re more than halfway through their allotted time. Now they bomb it back to Reykjavik, maybe making a stop at Husavik for a whale watching trip, but probably not. You may also see Snæfellsnes but if you do, it’s usually a separate trip before they set out on the Ring Road. A Ring Road vlog is almost invariably only the southern half of the circle so if you’re looking to emulate your favourite video but also see the entire country, allow yourself time to do the north and the west properly.
To be honest, there is an argument for just turning back at Egilsstaðir. That’s what I did, in a way. I was planning to just do the north – airport to the west, to Akureyri, to Egilsstaðir and back the same way. But I realised it would take longer to go back along the north, there’s less to see and do and the driving days would be longer, giving me less time to do those few things. That’s why I decided to make it an unplanned Ring Road trip and return via the south coast. I think I spent three days coming back, stopping at great places along the way, whereas I’d have done virtually nothing if I’d done the north. But at that point, I’d already spent four days doing the west and north, so I didn’t skip it. I just decided not to do it a second time in reverse. But honestly, if you’re planning a YouTube-style Ring Road trip, you’ll probably enjoy it more if you drive the south coast to Egilsstaðir and then come back the same way.
My tips: Myvatn, of course. Spend a day or two in Myvatn. Do the Diamond Circle, which is the tourist route in the north. It covers Myvatn, Husavik, Asbyrgi and Dettifoss. Asbyrgi is, in its way, too big to really get its majesty across on camera but it’s well worth seeing. Dettifoss is Europe’s most powerful waterfall but you do have to choose whether to visit the west or east side before you set out. The west side is green and beautiful and more tourist-friendly but the east side, which is wild and apocalyptic and there’s nothing stopping you stepping straight into the gigantic waterfall, has better views.
So that’s my take on the YouTube Ring Road itinerary. I could fill in huge chunks of the west but the west doesn’t appear in Iceland vlogs very often. For a full Ring Road itinerary, I did one last month here but you’ll need probably ten days or two weeks to cover the major sights of the entire island. Yeah, if you’re watching YouTube, bear in mind that it’s all style over substance and they’re only showing you the very prettiest places and everything they know probably came from someone else’s video. There are definitely places worth seeing that your average vanlifer Instagrammer YouTuber-type doesn’t show you.