Iceland has had a major boom in tourism in the last 15 years, which was welcomed at first as an antidote to the kreppa, the financial crash of 2008. At that time, tourism was Iceland’s third biggest industry. Almost overnight, it soared to first place, leaving fishing and aluminium processing, the former first and second places, in the dirt. That was a great thing! Hotels sprang up, tour operators appeared out of nowhere and tourist money seemed to flow like Iceland’s many waterfalls.
But it turned out to not be such a good thing. In the twelve months from June 2023 to June 2024, Iceland had 2.2m international visitors, an increase of over 14% from the previous twelve months, over 92% of whom were on holiday rather than visiting family or business or any other reason. They stayed an average of 7 nights, hitting a high of 8.2 last August and mostly stuck around the capital region and the south west. Interestingly, foreign visitors visiting every other region in the country actually dropped in 23-24.
2.2m visitors is a lot to a country whose population stood at just under 397,000 in the third quarter of 2023. That’s five tourists to every one inhabitant. And Iceland is beginning to really feel the weight of its tourism problem now – on its capital, on its people and on its nature. So let’s talk. How can you be a good tourist in Iceland?
Go beyond the south west
The south west is a great part of Iceland. It’s got the Golden Circle, it’s got the Blue Lagoon, it’s got the famous waterfalls, it’s got the black sand beach and it’s got the glacier lagoon. Do all of them and you can consider that you’ve “done” Iceland. But 2.2m tourists can feel a lot crowded into one corner of a small country and there’s a lot of other stuff worth seeing. In the last year, only 20% of foreign visitors went to the eastern region, for example and only 24% to the north. The Westfjords stand almost completely ignored with only 8% of visitors spending a night there.
An increasing number of people – and this is coming from things I’ve seen on Instagram and YouTube and isn’t representative of “real” tourists – are hiring a van and driving the Ring Road. That’s great. There’s so much more of Iceland to see! But as I said in this sarcastic “Iceland according to YouTube” itinerary from last year, they all visit the same places and they almost invariably get to Myvatn and realise they’re racing against the clock to do the entire other half of the Golden Circle and get back to Reykjavik in time for their flight home. If you want to be a good tourist and spread your tourism krona more evenly, spend a bit more time in the north and the east. The east is a labyrinth of fjordside villages, waterfalls, hikes and mountains. The main town in the region is Egilsstaðir and if you’re missing the Blue Lagoon, you can always go to Vök Baths, geothermal floating infinity pools in a beautiful lake.
I love the north and I think I advocate for going there whenever possible. Myvatn and Husavik are the main centres for nature – for volcanoes and craters and wildlife and caves, for a day trip to an active rumbling volcano and for Myvatn Nature Baths and Geosea, two more gorgeous geothermal pools. If you’re at the Nature Baths, let me know because they were expanding it last summer and I’d love to know what it’s like now it’s finished (if it’s finished. It should be but I know what construction projects are apt to be like). If you’re more the city type, Akureyri has most of the joys of Reykjavik but without the crowds and the premium prices. Oh, and it has its very own geothermal bath too, the Forest Lagoon. Let’s face it, you can’t move without falling into a geothermal pool in Iceland.
Use a tour company
I appreciate that there are benefits to doing things independently but hear me out, there are benefits to using a tour company too. First of all, lots of tourists arriving at a bit of beautiful nature by bus instead of car means they don’t need to build such a big – and ugly – parking place right next to it. This is one of the problems with overtourism – the requirement to build bigger and bigger car parks all over the beautiful places.
Second, a tour guide will tell you about the places you’re visiting and their pronunciation. This is something that drives me crazy about road trip vlogs, the mangling of place names, especially Þingvellir. Speaking of Þingvellir, road trip vloggers will often skip it altogether because it’s not as obviously interesting and photogenic as the huge waterfall and the geysers when it’s actually a hugely interesting and important place and worth visiting if you want to understand Iceland’s history and culture a bit better. You probably have no idea what you’re missing out on if you pathologically avoid going with the local experts. I have an entire blog post planned on the benefits of tour guides so I’ll leave it there for now.
Don’t damage nature
This sounds obvious but I think a lot of people don’t realise that what they’re doing qualifies as damage.
I see an incredible number of people, often vanlifers or “serious real travellers” who seem to decide that sticking to the roads as per Icelandic law is too pedestrian for them, that they’re bold and important adventurers, who head into the wilds. There’s a reason this is illegal and it’s not just to curtail your awesomeness. It’s because Icelandic soil is very fragile. It’s very thin and there’s very little plant life to hold it together because most plant life doesn’t flourish on an island that’s cold, snowy, windswept and pitch dark half the year and chilly and damp the other half. The tyre tracks left by your van or 4×4 will stay there for years. Maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll accidentally drive on an area that gets regularly rearranged by high winds or meandering river deltas which will erase your tracks within a few days but mostly you’re just creating a scar in the landscape that will stay there for decades.
Then, I know that Instagram photo of you standing on the rock staring out across the wilderness is irresistible but that moss is precious and fragile. Same thing applies, this is plant life and it takes a long time to recover from damage. After your car tyres, your boots are the second most damaging thing you can put on them. At a push, if you absolutely must walk on the moss, do it barefoot. Take a long flowy dress with you and make a more moss-friendly cottagecore photoshoot out of it. Or just don’t walk on the moss at all, which would be Iceland’s preference.
The tourist isn’t born who hasn’t wanted to make a pile of rocks to show he was there but please quit it. Didn’t you come to Iceland to see spectacular nature? Spectacular, undisturbed nature? Well, it looks ridiculous to see a little pile of balanced stones and it looks unhinged to come across an entire plot of them. Rocks serve their landscape best left where they’ve fallen. By all means, build your little tower and take a photo of it but then return the rocks to where you found them. Leave the landscape looking spectacular and undisturbed and not blotted by a tourist with the mind of a toddler.
Don’t write your name in anything
I hope this one goes without saying but I have seen tourists scratching their name in cliff edges and I went in a lava cave that has an entire wall of names rubbed into the lichen. You’re not important. If it’s that important that the world knows you were there, take a photo. If Iceland deems you important enough, maybe they’ll put an official plaque in an appropriate place one day. But otherwise, content yourself with pictures and leave Iceland’s rocks and cliffs alone.
Rent a smaller car
You’ll hear a lot that you need a 4×4 in Iceland and it’s true that you need a big 4×4 to traverse the Highland routes. But you won’t be doing that. I know it looks tempting, to get away from the tourist-filled Ring Road and show how intrepid you are by venturing into the Highlands but it’s illegal. At the entrance to every F-road, you’ll see a yellow sign declaring that it’s illegal to take rental cars beyond this point. That’s because ahead is an unmade road, with very little in the way of markings and signposts. Rocks are likely to scrape the bottom off your car and there will be rivers to drive through. Neither of these are very good for cars you need to return to their owners. If you really want to do this and you think you’re experienced enough, there are specialist rental companies with specialist expensive insurance but the car you picked up for a bargain price at the airport isn’t going to be among them.
So you’re not going to be driving in the Highlands. You’re going to mostly be driving on paved roads. At this point, I believe there’s only one stretch of the Ring Road that isn’t paved and that’s the bit that’s been renumbered so it isn’t even part of the Ring Road anymore, which is the bit between the south-east corner and Egilsstaðir. The long route around the fjords is paved but the old road over the mountains is all gravel. It’s very scenic and if you’ve got the time and the confidence to take on gravelly hairpin bends, go for it. But bear in mind I did it last year in a Hyundai i20. That really is good enough for any road an average tourist is going to encounter and the only reason you might want to go bigger is because there are more people in the car.
Even better, if you’re staying in the south west and not venturing onto the Ring Road, look into an electric car. Iceland uses hydro power and its geothermal power stations to make almost more clean renewable electricity than they know what to do with, so if you’re not going to have any potential issues with range, that might be a really good option. Out in the countryside, beyond the capital region, you don’t necessarily know how far you’re going to have to drive to find the next charging point but if you’re only driving between the Blue Lagoon, Reykjavik and Gullfoss, an electric car will probably be just the job.
Don’t eat the puffins
Iceland has recently decided to permit whaling. This is done on a small scale, almost artisan whaling, rather than indiscrimate random killing but it’s still one of the few things about Iceland I’m uncomfortable with. The main reason, I think, is so that a handful of restaurants can have exotic local meats for tourists, like whale and puffin. These are no longer on the regular menu for most Icelanders. It’s there for tourists. You might find it’s an interesting experience to try it just the once but as long as there’s a never-ending stream of tourists trying it “just the once”, they’ll keep on whaling and killing to provide it. Help show Iceland that visitors don’t want them doing this by not eating it. Iceland has great lamb and fish and hot dogs – you can enjoy the local cuisine without contributing to barbaric industries.
Well done for being a good tourist!
See, it’s not that difficult to be a good tourist – just think a bit bigger and don’t leave a mess behind you, that’s all there is to it!