Iceland Things to Do

With an abundance of guided tours available throughout the peak tourism months, exploring Iceland’s most famous landscapes is made easy, but if you’re visiting in the off-season or attempting a DIY excursion of more remote sights, you’ll need to consider your transport options more carefully.

Just because its name evokes images of snowshoeing and glacier hiking, doesn’t mean Iceland is only a winter destination; in fact, the summer months are one of the most popular times to explore with extended sunlight hours providing the opportunity to continue tours late into the evening. Here are a few suggestions for what to do in Iceland in summer.

With no trains, limited low season transport options and vast unpopulated landscapes, Iceland makes an obvious choice for a road trip and hiring a car or campervan to get around has become a popular option for travelers.Unless you’re arriving by ferry from mainland Europe, hiring a car on arrival is the best option and there’s a wide range of rental outlets that offer limited or unlimited mileage plans with the option to pick up and drop off the vehicle in different locations.

With vast glaciers, glistening fjords and looming volcanoes all within a few hours drive of Reykjavik, exploring Iceland’s otherworldly wilderness couldn’t be easier. To fuel your wanderlust, here are some of the best day trips from the capital.

1. The Golden circle
One of the most popular tours from Reykjavik is a circular route around the dramatic Thingvellir National Park, the geothermal valley of Haukadalur and the thundering Gullfoss Waterfalls – a 300km loop nicknamed the ‘Golden Circle’. Covering some of Southern Iceland’s most breathtaking scenery, the Golden Circle takes in the famous Geysir geyser, the Keiro volcanic crater and the Hellisheiðarvirkjun Geothermal Power Plant.

For travelers looking to see the Northern Lights, 2013 may be one of the best times to visit Iceland. According to scientists, the sun is reaching its solar maximum this year, an event that happens every 11 years. The end of this cycle means that the sun is closer to the earth and therefore produces more activity in the Northern Lights, or Aurora Borealis.

As summer ends and the Icelandic days get shorter and the air crisper, it’s time in Iceland to crank up that thermal heating and listen to a good story. Bring on a Saga. The Icelandic Sagas are the ancient stories of the country, they are the Icelanders touchstones of their history, their Acropolis or Great Wall if you know what I mean.