Inspirational Iceland: what to see in the ‘land of fire and ice’ and the best time to go
- Avoid the tourist hordes by going in winter and heading west to dramatic geothermal landscapes
- These are the places to see Iceland as it was until a few years ago – empty
Iceland is a land of explosions. Perched on the mid-Atlantic Ridge between two major tectonic plates, it is home to 30 active volcanoes, many of them beneath glaciers, leading to frequent floods of lava and/or melted ice.
However, Iceland has experienced another kind of explosion in recent years, as tourists flock to see the “land of ice and fire”.
This small country of 334,000 people in the North Atlantic came to the attention of the world in 2011, when drifting ash from its Eyjafjallajokull volcano closed European airspace for a week. More recently, its frequent use as a filming location for HBO series Game of Thrones contributed to tourist arrivals surging by 40 per cent in 2016, according to Iceland’s Arion Bank. That growth has since slowed to single figures though.
Over two million tourists from around the world now visit Iceland each year – quadruple the number of visitors compared to 2010. But it is still easy to dodge the crowds, as long as you know when and where to go.
Most tourists come in July and August to sample the brief Icelandic summer, or in late June to experience what it is like to have almost 24 hours of daylight around the summer solstice.
The majority stay in the capital, Reykjavik, and clog up the so-called “golden circle” of Pingvellir National Park, the Geysir geothermal area, and Gullfoss waterfall. The golden circle is busy all year-round, with selfie sticks and drones everywhere.