Back in the summer, shortly after joining a Facebook group for advice on trip to Iceland, I wrote a post called Stupid questions you were afraid to ask the first time you went to Iceland (summer edition) and now I’m back with a second part, the winter edition, featuring all the questions you were afraid to ask about weather, warm clothes and dark days.
Where do you go to the toilet on Northern Lights trips?
This one came up twice within a week. It’s not a question that’s ever come up for me – Northern Lights trips run to anywhere between three and six hours, depending on weather conditions and that’s fine. My first advice would be to go before you leave. If you’re on a big bus tour, your big tour coach will probably have an on-board toilet, although whether it’s in working order or not is another question. Because Northern Lights require dark skies, these trips often take you to the middle of nowhere. If you’re lucky enough to be in the vicinity of a cafe or roadhouse, you can use that – we went to Fossatún once, where they had the campsite restaurant open for warming up, hot drinks and toilet trips once but mostly you’re just finding somewhere you can park by the side of the road. Be prepared to look for your own patch of darkness behind a rock or a patch of bushes, take a SheWee or similar if needed and be quick. If you’re looking for Northern Lights, it’s probably pretty cold.
Can I wear trainers/sneakers in Reykjavik in winter?
This and its partner question: “Do I need snow pants in Reykjavik?” come up a lot. If you’re in the city, yes, you don’t need Serious Snow Boots or mountain boots or whatever. A lot of Reykjavik has underfloor heating (bless the geothermal gods for making this affordable!) and therefore a lot of the city centre is pretty snow-free and dry. Anywhere without heating will probably still be snow-free because so many sets of feet pass over it. If you’re leaving the city and going off on tours or adventures around the Golden Circle, you might want something a bit more solid but you absolutely don’t need those knee-length padded boots that look like they’re designed for the moon and you absolutely don’t need $800-worth of Everest-worthy mountain boots. Just something with a decent amount of grip that isn’t going to let water in like a sieve – anything more sturdy than canvas Converse and the like will probably be fine.
Do I need crampons to walk around Reykjavik?
There are two types of “crampons”. True crampons are big steel spikes strapped to good mountain boots meant for walking on glaciers and similar. They’re expensive, easily damaged and virtually impossibly to walk in on non-icy surfaces. The second type, the type you’re talking about, are microspikes or grips. No, you don’t generally need them to walk around Reykjavik. As already mentioned, most of the city is fairly snow-free due to the underfloor heating in the streets and footfall wearing it away.
Outside the city, you might well want to consider them. I’d definitely go for the microspike or stud variety rather than the coil variety which work quite well in powdery snow but are absolutely useless on ice. You’ll probably be ok with just your half-decent boots in powdery snow so it’s the ice where you need them – you’ll particularly appreciate them in icy weather around Skogafoss and Dettifoss.
How many pairs of waterproof boots do I need for four days?
If they’re properly waterproof and you don’t step in any rivers, just one. I admit, back in April 2022 I got very wet riding horses in the rain and then hiking up to Reykjadalur, the alleged hot river hike (not in the pouring rain, it’s not!) and my boots got soaked through. I probably have sturdier feet than you because I then did the Golden Circle the next day in mountain sandals. Great for splashing through puddles and my feet dry faster than a second pair of shoes would have. But I’ve been to Iceland…. seventeen times now and only once in all those times have I got my boots so wet they were unwearable the next day. You’ll probably be fine. If it’s raining when you’re riding horses, borrow their rubber boots and suits.
Can we drive round the Ring Road in winter?
Depends how much time you have. People who ask this question are usually envisioning doing it in about five days and that would be incredibly tight even in summer. The eastern half of the Ring Road is a lot more likely to be closed for bad weather than the western half, so I’d be nervous about the long stretch from Jökulsárlón to Akureyri, and especially about the bit between Breiðdalsvík and Mývatn. In winter, the sun doesn’t really poke its head above the horizon until around 10am and it’s gone again by 4pm, so even if you’re happy driving in the dark (and the snow and the ice and the rain and the wind…), you’re not going to see nearly as much as you would in the summer. Overall speeds will probably be lower, which means journey times are longer, camping is pretty well not an option so you either need to have accommodation booked in advance or you need to allow time to find somewhere. I wouldn’t bother trying in the winter. Come back in June or July.
Can you buy me the souvenir I didn’t bother buying and post it to me?
This one always astounds me. “The Starbucks mugs are back in stock” is one thing – I know a lot of people like to collect Starbucks mugs from wherever they go and those posts are always a howling mess of “Can someone get me one??” – but “Can you buy me this magnet/jumper/pot of salt?” is quite another. Why didn’t you buy it at the time? You liked it enough to take a photo of it but not enough to put your money where your mouth is until it was too late. There are always nice people on Facebook willing to do this for you but I’d highly recommend getting all your souvenirs while you’re still there.
Can I visit Iceland without hiring a car?
Yes! I didn’t hire a car until my seventh trip to Iceland and I still don’t in the winter. Public transport outside of Reykjavik is virtually non-existent so if you want to be in a particular corner of Iceland that’s not Reykjavik, I’d recommend flying there rather than attempting to match up the handful of buses. You’re probably looking at two to three days to get to the far end of Iceland by bus, which will include a good few long waits where buses just aren’t timed to meet each other.
If you’re in Reykjavik, there will be tours all over the west, south-west and south, summer and winter. Everywhere you could possibly want to go will be available on some tour or other. If you’re basing yourself elsewhere, there will also be tours in all major towns, but probably not as many.
Is it safe to walk around Reykjavik in the dark?
If you can’t walk around Reykjavik in the dark, you’re spending a lot of your winter trip stuck inside. I differentiate between “dark” and “night”. Personally, I’d have no problem walking around Reykjavik at 3am but I think dark at 3am is very different from dark at 5pm, even though the level of darkness is pretty much identical. Iceland is one of the safest countries in the world and any danger is far more likely to come from other tourists than from the locals, who are a pretty peaceful and law-abiding folk on the whole. Take the usual precautions – don’t walk down dodgy back alleys on your own, don’t get so drunk you can’t take care of yourself, don’t flash your expensive jewellery around in crowded bars and so on.
Is it worth booking a tour for the Northern Lights or should I just hire a car and go on my own?
I’d personally book a tour for two reasons. The first is that I’m not experienced in driving on ice and snow and I have no wish to try to figure it out in the dark, to say nothing of the cost of hiring a car and the difficulty of parking it in a city. The second is that tour guides know the quiet and dark places of Iceland and how to read the Northern Lights apps. You will drive around hoping to stumble on a good spot to park. Your tour guide will know where they’re going before they’ve even finished gathering you up.
Try to find a small tour and preferably, try to find a tour that includes an activity so that if there are no Northern Lights, you still feel like you’ve done something. I have a soft spot for a particular tour that includes a visit to a hot spring (currently closed) but the company has let me down on it two years in a row, so I won’t name or link it or them. “Snowmobiling and”, “Golden Circle and”, “Geothermal pool and” and so on. I’d avoid the boat tours – one, seasickness and two, you want to be able to keep your camera still while taking photos. If you can find a tour that includes photos taken by someone who knows what they’re doing, even better.
Is it unreasonable to drive to Kirkjubæjarklaustur on our first day after an overnight flight in December?
Yes. This is a drive of nearly 200 miles which is going to take a minimum of four hours, with no stops. You’re going to be tired, at least half of it is going to be in more or less pitch darkness and you won’t take time to appreciate all the scenery on the way there if you’re set on getting to Klaustur. There’s nothing even there, not anything worth that drive. If you’re desperate to see Jökulsárlón, go with a tour. It’ll be a long day but at least someone else will be driving, someone experienced with Icelandic weather and road conditions and you can sleep on the way there.
Is it worth going to Iceland in January?
Yes. Iceland is lovely in January. It’s cold and snowy, there’s a chance of Northern Lights and geothermal pools are all the lovelier for your face being frozen above them. Yes, it’ll still have the dark mornings and dark afternoons but you’ve got the novelty of adventures in the snow and ice and it’s a little less crowded when all the Christmas crowds have gone home.
Tell me specifically what layers to wear on my trip
Thank you for asking this as such a politely phrased question. It’s going to depend on what you’re doing and how you cope with the cold. My mum, for example, would put on a lot more layers than me and would believe that thermals are something magical rather than simply a thinnish extra layer. Last time I was in Iceland in the winter, I tended to wear a thermal top, an ordinary t-shirt, a really thin lightweight athleisure hoodie under a proper hoodie and then either a down jacket or my heated coat, depending on how cold or how wet it was. I had a pair of lined quick-drying hiking trousers and if I was spending any time outside, I’d wear thermal leggings underneath them. Skip that for an evening walk to the nearby swimming pool – it’s just more layers to take off and put back on when I’m only going to be outside for ten minutes. I have a fleece skirt I’d add for Northern Lights trips which require a lot of standing around in the cold because my thighs get really cold and that thing is really effective for helping keep them warm. Looks ridiculous.
Will I see the Northern Lights on my trip?
Impossible to say. It depends on solar activity and cloud cover and you can’t predict them more than a few hours in advance, let alone weeks away. Even if it’s clear and the KP index is high, it still depends on whether the Lights are in the mood to come out, where you are and whether there’s anything else interfering with the sky, like a full moon. Book a trip, by all means, but make sure you have other plans so that you’re not disappointed if your one plan was to see the Northern Lights. I’m up to eleven attempts to see the Northern Lights and seen something worth seeing with my own eyeballs three times (two of those in Tromsø, one in Iceland), plus one unexpected September evening which was absolutely not an attempt to see them, at Akranes campsite, while wearing sandals and borrowing the office’s wifi and never imagining the sky suddenly ripping open.
Do I actually need travel insurance?
Yes! Never ever get on a plane or a ferry or a cruise ship or the Eurostar or otherwise cross international borders without travel insurance! If you get ill or injured, you’ll need it. If you die, your family/friends/whoever ends up responsible for shipping your body home will need it. If your flight gets delayed or cancelled, you’ll need it. If it turns out your AirBnb is a complete fake out to rip you off, you’ll need it. And so on and so on. Check what you’re covered for – cruise insurance is extra, extreme sports are extra, “a volcano went off” is extra, sports equipment is extra and so on. And be truthful – don’t lie about pre-existing health conditions to make it cheaper because if you get found it, your insurance will straight-up be invalidated.
My tour has been cancelled at the last minute. Is there an identical one from a different company I can book onto?
If your tour has been cancelled at the last minute, chances are it’s because of the weather and if that’s so, they’ll probably tell you. If it’s because of weather, then any tour willing to run exactly the same trip is probably one you’ll want to avoid. Company A says it’s unsafe but Company B says “Ah, we’ll give it a go, what’s the worst that can happen?” (this is why we have insurance but it’s also why we accept that we don’t get to do that trip that day). Company A will either reschedule or refund. Book again for another day and hope for better weather and in the meantime, there’s plenty of choice for alternative adventures. If the weather’s truly foul, I always recommend a lagoon or swimming pool.
Other than getting very personal and repeating some unhinged questions word for word, I think that’s all the obvious stupid questions I can come up with right now. If you have any others, leave me a comment and I’ll get back to you. Because no question is actually stupid and if you can’t ask it here, where can you ask it?
I Am A Polar Bear 