Tag: Iceland

Icelandic Sagas and the North Atlantic: Reading the Settlement Landscape

Icelandic Sagas and the North Atlantic: Reading the Settlement Landscape The settlement story the sagas record reaches beyond Iceland’s own coast: a Greenland fjord, settled from Iceland around 985. Stand in the Almannagjá rift at Þingvellir and the ground itself is a kind of text: the seam where two tectonic plates pull apart, and the […]

Vatnsnes Seals and Hvitserkur: Wildlife on Iceland’s Northern Coast

North of Hrútafjörður, the Vatnsnes Peninsula reaches into the sea like an afterthought — a low, treeless finger of basalt and grazing land that most drivers on Iceland’s Ring Road never see, because the Ring Road itself skirts well to the south. It rewards the detour. Grey and harbour seals haul out along its shingle […]

Látrabjarg Puffins: Bird Cliffs and Seabird Life on Iceland’s West Coast

Látrabjarg Puffins: Bird Cliffs and Seabird Life on Iceland’s West Coast Látrabjarg’s cliffline runs for kilometres along Iceland’s westernmost coast, with puffins nesting along the grassy edge. At the westernmost tip of Europe, a wall of basalt drops more than 400 metres into the North Atlantic, and for a few weeks each summer that wall […]

Húsavík Whale Watching: Marine Life and North Iceland’s Coastal Culture

Skjálfandi Bay opens out from the fishing town of Húsavík like a wide, sheltered amphitheatre, and on a calm North Iceland morning it can feel like the whole ocean is holding its breath. This is the water Icelanders themselves call the whale-watching capital of the country, a title earned over three decades of near-daily sightings […]

Iceland Small Group Tours for Mature Travellers

Iceland Small Group Tours for Mature Travellers Iceland rewards travellers who take their time with it. The volcanic landscapes, fishing villages and saga-era history strung around this small island are best absorbed at a walking pace, with someone on hand to explain what you are looking at — not from behind the wheel of a […]

Snæfellsnes and Jules Verne: Journey to the Centre of the Earth in Iceland

Snæfellsnes and Jules Verne: Journey to the Centre of the Earth in Iceland Jules Verne never set foot in Iceland, yet he chose one exact spot on it — the ice-capped crater of Snæfellsjökull — as the entrance to the centre of the earth. On the fourth day of Odyssey’s small group tour, travellers drive […]

How Iceland Uses Geothermal Energy: From Hot Springs to Greenhouses

How Iceland Uses Geothermal Energy: From Hot Springs to Greenhouses Geothermal heat shapes daily life across Iceland, from home heating to greenhouses and hot spring bathing. Iceland sits directly on the boundary where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates are slowly pulling apart, and that restlessness has quietly reshaped daily life on the island […]

Iceland’s Black Sand Beaches: Volcanoes, Glaciers and the South Coast

South of Iceland’s interior icecaps, the coastline turns black. Rivers braid across a volcanic outwash plain, glaciers calve into the same sands that swallow a footprint within minutes of a receding wave, and a village barely large enough to hold a church looks out over some of the most recognisable cliffs in the North Atlantic. […]

Iceland’s Westfjords: A Route Through Fjords, Cliffs and Fishing Communities

A fjord road threads beneath dark basalt headlands past one of the Westfjords’ small, isolated fishing settlements. Most of Iceland’s Ring Road runs through a landscape still being made: young lava fields, steaming vents, glaciers grinding fresh gravel into outwash plains. The Westfjords are older. This is Iceland’s oldest exposed rock, cut by ice into […]

Iceland Ring Road Itinerary for Mature Travellers: A 17-Day Circumnavigation

Iceland Ring Road Itinerary for Mature Travellers: A 17-Day Circumnavigation Landmannalaugar’s rhyolite mountains and obsidian lava fields, the highland crossing near the end of this 17-day circumnavigation. Iceland does not reward a single detour so much as a full circuit of it. The Ring Road — Route 1, the two-lane highway that traces the coastline […]

Lake Mývatn: Volcanoes, Craters, Birds and the Making of North Iceland

Lake Mývatn: Volcanoes, Craters, Birds and the Making of North Iceland Few places on the tour compress so much of Iceland’s volcanic story into a single afternoon as the basin around Lake Mývatn. Within a few kilometres you can stand on a lava field that was still erupting within living memory, walk between grass-topped pseudo-craters […]

Icelandic Food: Fish, Lamb, Rye Bread and Geothermal Greenhouses

Icelandic Food: Fish, Lamb, Rye Bread and Geothermal Greenhouses A working farm on the Snaefellsnes Peninsula, where curing sheds and pasture meet the Atlantic coastline. Iceland has never been an easy place to grow food. Its farmers work a short summer against volcanic soil, salt spray and near-constant wind, and for a thousand years its […]

Snorri Sturluson and Reykholt: Sagas, History and Icelandic Independence

Snorri Sturluson and Reykholt: Sagas, History and Icelandic Independence Reykholt’s church stands at the centre of the valley settlement that was once the estate of Snorri Sturluson. West of Reykjavík, where Route 50 leaves the Ring Road and climbs into the Borgarfjörður valley, sits a settlement small enough to miss in a moment’s inattention: Reykholt. […]

Icelandic Horses: Breeding, Gaits and Rural Life Across the Island

Icelandic horses grazing in the breeding valleys of Skagafjörður, on Iceland’s north coast. Iceland has exactly one breed of horse, and by law, it will never have a second. Since the Althing outlawed the import of foreign horses in 982, the island’s herds have bred true to a stock some visitors mistake for ponies and […]

Althing, the world’s longest running parliament is in Iceland

The Althing In the Thingvellir valley, in the southwest of Iceland, the world’s longest running national parliament first assembled over 1000 years ago. Known as the Althing (Icelandic: Alþingi), the parliament was founded as an outdoor assembly in 930, uniting the various Viking chieftaincies of Iceland and establishing justice, order, and a rule of law. […]

Iceland Museum collection

This country has some two hundered and sixty five small Icelandic museum (265) and permanent exhibition spaces. The Icelander has a passion for collecting things so much so that it permeates Icelandic culture.

Lunar landscapes and geology in Iceland

Iceland Landscape: Lunar Likeness and Geology The strange, moon-like landscapes of Iceland inspire astronomers for the Northern light and the clear night skies, also stargazers and film buffs alike to pursue that Iceland tour. Others travel across the world for its stunning Blue Lagoon, and impressive volcanoes and Volcanic landscape and a massive glacier or […]

Northern Lights

The science of the Northern Lights Although many are more familiar with the Northern Lights, the natural phenomenon is not exclusive to the Northern Hemisphere. The polar lights are caused by solar activity. When there is a solar storm called coronal mass ejection happening, electrified gas particles travel through space at high speed and reach […]

The History of the Settlement of Iceland

Marooned at the top of the globe, somewhere in the North Atlantic Ocean, lies the island nation of Iceland, a land of vivid contrasts where nature reigns supreme in her most dramatic form. Iceland is the world’s oldest democracy and boasts more writer’s per capita than any other country in the world. It is said that many Icelanders still believe in the mythical figures of the Norse past, such as elves, trolls and fairies, which may be due to the country’s literary history including its famous sagas, epic tales based on Iceland’s settlement from around 9-11 AD. 

Questions About Iceland for Senior Travellers

Questions about Iceland for mature travellers Odyssey Traveller specialises in crafting rewarding experiences for mature travellers who like to learn and travel as a couple or solo traveller. Providing adventure and educational programs on escorted small group tours since 1983. Odyssey has built up a reasonable knowledge bank to answer questions about Iceland that travellers […]