Iceland: The Ring Road by car
When to go
Mid-May to September. In June the sun barely sets, the waterfalls are full and the mountain roads have reopened; July and August are the warmest and the busiest, and the rooms on the south coast go early. From October the days shorten fast and storms can close the Ring Road in the east and the north for hours or days; in December Reykjavik has about four hours of daylight. In winter this route is for drivers who know snow and ice, and only with a close eye on the forecast.
The stops
Interactive map of the route on our site ›
- Reykjavik2 nights
The northernmost capital of a sovereign state. Hallgrímskirkja, the church on the hill, was designed by Guðjón Samúelsson and took from 1945 to 1986 to build; its tower, at 74.5 metres, looks out over the whole city.
- Thingvellirstop on the way
Here the Alþingi, the assembly of Iceland, first met in 930, and met in the open air for centuries after. The valley is a rift where the North American and Eurasian plates pull apart, and in the Silfra fissure you can snorkel between them.
- Geysirstop on the way
The Great Geysir gave its name to every geyser in the world, but it now rarely erupts. Strokkur, a few steps away, goes off every few minutes, sending water some fifteen to twenty metres into the air.
- Gullfossstop on the way
The Hvítá river drops in two steps, 32 metres in all, into a narrow canyon. Sigríður Tómasdóttir, the daughter of the farm that owned the falls, is remembered for fighting the plans to dam them in the early twentieth century.
- Fludirone night
A village that lives on its hot springs: greenhouses heated by the ground grow most of the mushrooms sold in Iceland. The Secret Lagoon, Gamla Laugin, a natural hot pool made into a swimming pool in 1891, is the oldest in the country.
- Seljalandsfossstop on the way
A waterfall of about sixty metres off the old sea cliffs, with a path that runs right behind the curtain of water. Bring a rain jacket; you come out wet.
- Skogafossstop on the way
Sixty metres high and some twenty-five wide, and on sunny days it throws a rainbow. By legend the settler Þrasi hid a chest of gold behind the falls; a stair of more than four hundred steps climbs beside it to the top.
- Reynisfjarastop on the way
A black sand beach under columns of basalt, facing the sea stacks of Reynisdrangar, which by legend are trolls caught by the sunrise. The waves here come far up the beach without warning and have killed visitors: never turn your back to the sea.
- Vikone night
The southernmost village in Iceland, under the Mýrdalsjökull ice cap, which covers the volcano Katla; Katla last erupted in 1918. The red-roofed church on the hill stands where the village expects to be safe from the flood of meltwater an eruption would send down.
- Fjadrargljufurstop on the way
A twisting canyon some two kilometres long and up to about a hundred metres deep, with a path along its rim. After Justin Bieber filmed a music video here in 2015 the crowds grew so large that the canyon has had to be closed at times to let the moss recover.
- Kirkjugolfstop on the way
The Church Floor, at Kirkjubæjarklaustur: the flat tops of basalt columns, worn smooth, that look like a laid stone floor but were made by nature. The village takes its name from a convent of nuns that stood here from 1186 until the Reformation.
- Skaftafellone night
A green oasis between glacier tongues, a national park from 1967 and now part of Vatnajökull National Park. A walk up from the visitor centre leads to Svartifoss, a waterfall framed by black basalt columns.
- Fjallsarlonstop on the way
A smaller glacier lagoon under the Fjallsjökull glacier, a few minutes before Jökulsárlón and much quieter, with icebergs that break off straight in front of you.
- Jokulsarlonstop on the way
A lagoon that began to form in the 1930s as the Breiðamerkurjökull glacier retreated, now full of icebergs and among the deepest lakes in Iceland. Two James Bond films were shot on its ice; across the road, the chunks washed up on the black sand are called Diamond Beach.
- Hofnone night
A fishing town on a spit of land with the Vatnajökull ice cap behind it, the largest glacier in Iceland, covering about eight percent of the country. Höfn calls itself the langoustine capital of Iceland and holds a langoustine festival every summer.
- Stokksnesstop on the way
A cape of black sand dunes under the jagged wall of Vestrahorn. The land belongs to a farm, and the entry fee is paid at the Viking Café; near it stands a Viking village built as a film set for a film that was never made.
- Djupivogurone night
A fishing village on a quiet harbour in the East Fjords, the first town in Iceland to join the Cittaslow movement of slow towns. On the pier stand the Eggs of Merry Bay, 34 granite eggs by the artist Sigurður Guðmundsson, one for each species of bird that nests in the area.
- Egilsstadirone night
The largest town of East Iceland, on the long lake Lagarfljót, home of the Lagarfljót Worm, Iceland’s answer to the Loch Ness monster. On the far shore lies Hallormsstaður, the largest forest in a country that has very few trees.
- Seydisfjordurstop on the way
A fjord village over a mountain pass from Egilsstaðir, with a painted rainbow street leading to a blue wooden church. The Norröna car ferry from Denmark docks here; in December 2020 landslides swept away houses in the village, and no one was killed.
- Hverirstop on the way
A field of boiling mud pots and hissing steam vents under the Námafjall ridge, coloured orange and yellow by sulphur. Stay on the marked paths: the crust beside them can be scalding. Lake Mývatn, a few minutes away, takes its name from the midges that swarm over it in summer.
- Reykjahlid2 nights
The village on the north shore of Lake Mývatn. In the eruptions of 1729 a lava flow reached the village and parted round its church, which stood on a small rise, and the church was spared; the Mývatn Nature Baths, a lagoon of warm geothermal water, are a few minutes away.
- Dettifossstop on the way
The most powerful waterfall in Europe: the grey glacial river Jökulsá á Fjöllum drops some forty-four metres over a hundred-metre-wide edge. It plays the birth of life on Earth in the opening scene of Prometheus.
- Skutustadagigarstop on the way
Pseudocraters on the south shore of Lake Mývatn: they are not volcanoes, but bubbles of steam that burst through hot lava when it flowed over the wet marsh, leaving rings of green mounds. A short path climbs between them.
- Godafossstop on the way
The waterfall of the gods. By the sagas, when the Alþingi took up Christianity around the year 1000, the lawspeaker Þorgeir, coming home, threw the statues of the old gods into these falls.
- Akureyrione night
The capital of the north, at the head of the long Eyjafjörður, where whale-watching boats leave from the harbour. After the crash of 2008 the town turned the red of its traffic lights into hearts, and they are hearts still; the church at the top of the steps is by Guðjón Samúelsson, the architect of Hallgrímskirkja.
- Glaumbaerstop on the way
A farm of turf-roofed houses joined by passages, lived in until 1947 and now a museum of how Icelanders lived for centuries. A statue here honours Guðríður Þorbjarnardóttir, who sailed to Vinland in America and is said to have given birth there to Snorri, the first European child born in the New World, before settling at Glaumbær.
- Blonduosone night
A small town where the glacial river Blanda meets the sea, roughly halfway on the road between Akureyri and Reykjavik. Its Textile Museum keeps the handwork of Icelandic farm women, and its modern church is shaped to recall a volcanic crater.
- Grabrokstop on the way
A crater of red and grey scoria right beside the Ring Road, with a wooden stair to the rim and the view over the lava field that flowed from it.
- Reykholtone night
The farm of Snorri Sturluson, the medieval chieftain and writer of the sagas of the Norse kings and of the Prose Edda, the book of the old Norse gods; he was murdered here in 1241. Snorralaug, the round stone hot pool fed by a spring that he is said to have bathed in, is beside the church.
- Hraunfossarstop on the way
Hundreds of small falls that pour straight out of the Hallmundarhraun lava field into the blue Hvítá river along almost a kilometre of bank. A few steps upstream, the river rushes through a narrow gorge at Barnafoss.
- Deildartunguhverstop on the way
The hot spring with the greatest flow in Europe, boiling out of the ground at close to a hundred degrees. Its water is piped to heat the homes of Borgarnes and Akranes.
- Borgarnesstop on the way
A town on a headland, the setting of the saga of Egill Skallagrímsson, warrior and poet. The Settlement Centre tells the story of the first Norse settlers of Iceland and of Egill; his father, Skallagrímur, is said to lie in the mound in the town park.
- Reykjavikone night
Back in the capital. Harpa, the concert hall on the old harbour, opened in 2011 with a glass skin of geometric panels designed with the artist Ólafur Elíasson, and the Blue Lagoon, near the airport at Keflavík, is a good last stop on the way home.
What it costs
Eighty dollars a night is the room. The car, the fuel and the parking are yours. Fuel in Iceland is among the dearest in Europe, and many pumps in the countryside are unmanned and take only a card with a PIN. Parking is paid at most of the big sights on this route, Þingvellir, Seljalandsfoss, Skaftafell and Jökulsárlón among them, by app or at a machine. There is one tolled tunnel on the ring, Vaðlaheiðargöng just east of Akureyri, paid online after you drive through; forget it and the rental company bills you with its own fee. The extra worth paying for is gravel insurance on the rental.
What to know
Four things. One: F-roads. The roads marked F, into the highlands, are closed to two-wheel-drive cars by law, and the rental contract forbids them too; they have unbridged rivers, and no insurance covers a car damaged on them. This route never needs one. Two: insurance and wind. Stones thrown up on gravel stretches chip windscreens, so take gravel cover, and on the south coast sand and ash storms can strip paint. The wind can tear a door out of your hand and bend it on its hinges, which insurance does not cover: park facing the wind and open the door holding it with both hands. Three: check before every drive. road.is shows which roads are open and how they are, and on safetravel.is you can leave your travel plan and read the day’s warnings. Four: speed and sheep. The limit is 90 on paved roads, 80 on gravel and 50 in towns, cameras stand along the ring and the fines are steep. In summer sheep roam free beside the road and cross without warning; many bridges are one lane wide, and the car nearer to the bridge goes first. Never stop on the road for a photograph.
Roads, tolls and rules
Iceland drives on the right. The Ring Road, Route 1, runs right round the island, mostly as a paved road of one lane each way, with short gravel stretches in the east; outside the south-west there are long gaps between fuel stations, so fill up whenever the tank is half empty. The days are kept short, most of them under 160 kilometres with two or three stops, so there is time to walk at every one; only two remote stretches are longer, from Egilsstaðir to Lake Mývatn and from Blönduós to Reykholt, about 170 kilometres each with a single stop on the way.
Travel Iceland: The Ring Road by car
The route on our site, with a room up to $80 every night.