Visiting Iceland for Mature Travellers

If you are a mature traveller thinking about visiting Iceland, this guide sets out what the island asks of you and what it gives back. Iceland packs glaciers, waterfalls, geothermal fields, fjords and an exciting modern culture into a relatively small, geologically active island in the North Atlantic, from the Jokulsarlon glacier lagoon and Gullfoss waterfall to the whale-watching harbour at Husavik, the Snaefellsnes Peninsula and Vatnajökull National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Below we answer the questions older travellers ask us most, then look at the history and landscapes that make the trip worthwhile. This page is a backgrounder for Odyssey Traveller’s Iceland cultural and wilderness small group tour, a 17-day circuit of the island that starts and finishes in Reykjavík.

Is Iceland suitable for older travellers?

Yes: for travellers in their 60s, 70s and beyond who are in good health and reasonably steady on their feet, Iceland is one of the most manageable wilderness destinations in the world. It is safe (Iceland has topped the Global Peace Index every year since 2008), English is widely spoken, and many of its best-known sights are a short, mostly level walk from a car park.

The challenges are real, though. The weather changes quickly, and wind and rain can make a short walk hard work. Paths at waterfalls and in lava fields are often uneven, wet or icy, and towns are far apart once you leave the southwest. There are no direct flights from Australia or New Zealand, so most travellers connect through a European hub. Plan your pace around those, and age itself is rarely the obstacle.

Húsavík, on Iceland’s north coast, is the country’s best-known base for whale watching.

How much walking do you need to be able to do in Iceland?

You need to be comfortable walking a few kilometres a day on uneven ground, and on some days climbing steps. The classic sights vary a great deal: the main viewpoints at Gullfoss and around Strokkur are short walks on made paths, while the top of Skógafoss is reached by a staircase of more than 500 steps, and the best of the lava fields and canyons are only seen on foot.

Our Iceland cultural and wilderness small group tour is graded Level 2 – Moderate. Participants should be able to carry their own luggage, climb and descend stairs, and take part in 3–5 hours of physical activity a day, the equivalent of walking up to 8 kilometres on uneven ground. If you would like to talk through any mobility questions before booking, contact our Tour Specialists, and see our guide to Iceland small group tours for a closer look at a typical day.

Skógafoss in South Iceland: the view from the riverbed is a short, level walk, while the viewing platform at the top is a long staircase climb.

Should you drive yourself around Iceland or join a small group tour?

Driving yourself suits confident drivers who are happy with long distances and changeable conditions; a small group tour suits travellers who would rather look at the scenery than the road. Route 1, the Ring Road, runs for about 1,300 kilometres around the island. It is paved, but it still has some single-lane bridges, sheep wander onto the verges in summer, and high winds can close stretches of it, so check road conditions on umferdin.is and weather warnings from the Icelandic Met Office every day.

On a small group tour, a driver guide handles the roads and a Program Leader handles the logistics, so you can concentrate on the landscape and the stories behind it. Our Iceland Ring Road itinerary sets out how our tour covers the island day by day.

Sheep on the road: in summer, livestock grazes freely beside many of Iceland’s country roads.

When is the best time to visit Iceland?

The best time to visit Iceland depends on what you want to see: summer for long days and open highland roads, the darker months for the northern lights. Many travellers choose the shoulder months in late spring and early autumn, between the high season of summer (June to August) and the off-season (roughly November to March), when the main sights are less crowded but the days are still long enough for full field trips.

Iceland is cooler than its reputation for hot springs suggests. In Reykjavík the average temperature is around 1°C in January and around 11–12°C in July, with an annual mean of about 5°C (1991–2020 averages). Summer brings the midnight sun: Reykjavík lies just south of the Arctic Circle, so in mid-June the sun sets close to midnight and rises again around 3 am, and the sky never gets fully dark.

When can you see the northern lights in Iceland?

You can see the northern lights in Iceland from about September to April, when the nights are dark enough, provided the sky is clear and solar activity is high enough. The aurora borealis appears when charged particles carried from the sun by the solar wind are steered by the Earth’s magnetic field towards the polar regions, where they collide with oxygen and nitrogen high in the atmosphere and give off green, and occasionally red or violet, light.

Visibility depends on cloud cover, the phase of the moon (a full moon makes a faint aurora harder to see) and the level of solar activity, so no trip can promise a sighting. Check the Icelandic Met Office’s aurora forecast each evening, and read our tips on photographing the northern lights before you go.

The northern lights over Kirkjufell and Kirkjufellsfoss, on the Snaefellsnes Peninsula.

A Viking history

Iceland’s nearest neighbour in Europe is Scotland, about 800 kilometres (500 miles) away, and the flight to the capital, Reykjavík, takes around three hours from London and five to six from New York.

Iceland has a complex and fascinating history that began with Viking settlement in the late 9th century, when settlers from Norway and other Nordic communities sailed west to stake claims to land. As Anders Winroth writes in The Age of the Vikings (Princeton University Press, 2014), these were not ordinary people drawn by adventure but “power-hungry chieftains” who “did not succeed in the power games of Scandinavia, or who simply saw greener pastures further away”.

Norsemen Landing in Iceland, a 19th-century engraving. Photo source.

Iceland and the North Atlantic islands, from the Faroes and Shetland to Greenland, became, in Michael Pye’s phrase in The Edge of the World (2014), “a small empire with no enemies”, but one without law until the settlers founded an assembly, the Althing, at Thingvellir around 930. The Old Norse word þing (assembly) survives in place names across Northern Europe, such as Tinganes in the Faroe Islands, Dingwall in Scotland, Tynwald on the Isle of Man, and Tingwall in Shetland and Orkney.

In 1262–64 Iceland’s chieftains swore allegiance to the King of Norway, and when the Norwegian and Danish crowns were joined (later formalised in the Kalmar Union of 1397), rule of Iceland passed to Denmark. Iceland won home rule in 1904 and became a sovereign state in union with Denmark in 1918, and the Icelandic republic was established in 1944.

Traditional turf houses in rural Iceland. The turf house originates from Norse building tradition.

Why “Iceland”?

According to the sagas, Iceland was named by a grieving Viking, Flóki Vilgerðarson, who lost his daughter to the sea on the voyage and his livestock to a harsh winter. Climbing a mountain, he saw the fjord Vatnsfjörður filled with drift ice and named the land accordingly. Greenland, by contrast, was named by Erik the Red in what has been called a medieval marketing ploy to attract settlers. As Pye drily puts it, Erik “left Norway for frontier Iceland ‘on account of some killings’ and after a while he had to leave Iceland on account of some more killings”.

Icelandic has changed so little that Icelanders today can still read the 13th-century sagas without great difficulty, although pronunciation has changed. English is taught in schools and widely spoken.

In Reykjanesbær, near the international airport, Viking World is a museum built around the Íslendingur, a full-size replica of the 9th-century Gokstad ship excavated in Norway, which sailed from Iceland to North America in 2000. Our article on Viking woollen sails explains how such ships crossed the ocean.

Iceland’s landscapes: what to see

Iceland is a young island on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and you can almost watch it forming as volcanoes, glaciers and hot springs shape the land. Our article on Iceland’s lunar landscapes and geology explains the forces at work.

Thingvellir and the Golden Circle

Þingvellir (Thingvellir) National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage site, where the remains of some 50 booths built of turf and stone mark the meeting place of the Althing. It is also where you can walk through the rift between the North American and Eurasian plates, which are pulling apart by about 2 centimetres a year. Thingvellir is the first stop on the popular route known as the Golden Circle, which also takes in the Geysir geothermal area and Gullfoss waterfall.

Thingvellir National Park, where the Althing first met around 930.

Geysir gave its name to every geyser in the world; the word comes from the Old Norse for “to gush”. The Great Geysir now erupts only rarely, but its neighbour Strokkur goes off every few minutes, usually to 15–20 metres. Nearby, Gullfoss tumbles 32 metres (105 feet) in two stages into a narrow canyon; expect spray, and wet steps on the lower path.

Strokkur erupting in the Geysir geothermal area.

Gullfoss, the “Golden Waterfall”, drops in two stages into a narrow canyon.

Vatnajökull and the glacier country

Vatnajökull National Park covers more than 1.4 million hectares of volcanic and glacial land, nearly 14% of Iceland. It contains ten central volcanoes, two of them among the most active in the country, and was added to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 2019 (see our round-up of the newest UNESCO World Heritage sites). Within the park, Skaftafell has walking trails to glacier tongues, and at the Jökulsárlón lagoon icebergs calve from the ice cap.

Outlet glaciers of the Vatnajökull ice cap, in Vatnajökull National Park.

Further west on the south coast, the black sand beach and basalt columns at Reynisfjara, near Vík, are well worth the trip. Treat the surf with great respect: sudden “sneaker waves” run far up the beach without warning and have swept visitors out to sea, so stay well back from the water’s edge and follow the warning signs.

Reynisfjara, near Vík: black sand, basalt columns and the Reynisdrangar sea stacks.

Geothermal lagoons

The Blue Lagoon, set in a black lava field beside the Svartsengi geothermal power plant on the Reykjanes Peninsula, formed in the 1970s from the plant’s mineral-rich runoff and is named for its milky-blue water, which reaches the lagoon at about 38°C. Volcanic activity on the peninsula has closed it at times since 2023, so check its status before you go. In the north, the Mývatn Nature Baths, opened in 2004 and renamed Earth Lagoon Mývatn in 2025, offer a quieter alternative.

The Blue Lagoon, with the Svartsengi geothermal power plant behind it.

Snaefellsnes, the Westfjords and the north

The Snaefellsnes Peninsula is within a day’s drive of the capital and packs diverse scenery into a compact space. At its tip, the glacier-capped volcano Snæfellsjökull anchors a national park of lava fields and sea cliffs. North of it, the Westfjords and their capital, Isafjordur, are among the least-visited parts of the country.

The Arctic Coast Way, a signposted 900-kilometre driving route along the north coast that opened in June 2019, links remote headlands and colourful fishing towns, including Húsavík.

Reykjavík

In Reykjavík, you’ll find a colourful capital not much larger than a small town, perched on a rugged coastline and proud of its setting, architecture and culture. More than a third of Iceland’s people live in the city itself, and nearly two-thirds in the wider capital region. The Harpa Concert Hall won the Mies van der Rohe Award, the European Union’s prize for contemporary architecture, in 2013.

Visit the Old Harbour, once a service harbour and now a lively tourist quarter, and walk the streets of Old Reykjavík. The National Museum of Iceland tells the story of the nation from settlement to the present, and the Lutheran church of Hallgrímskirkja, the largest church in the country, is visible from almost everywhere in town. Just over half of Icelanders are members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland, the national church.

Reykjavík across the Tjörnin pond, with the tower of Hallgrímskirkja rising behind the old town.

Practical preparation for your Iceland trip

A little preparation goes a long way in Iceland. Take out comprehensive travel insurance with medical cover before you go; it is required on all Odyssey tours, and you should tell us about any dietary needs or medical conditions when you book. Pack in layers whatever the season: waterproof jacket and trousers, a warm hat and gloves, walking shoes with good grip, and swimwear for the geothermal pools.

Allow a spare day at the start: flights to Iceland involve long connections, and we recommend arriving in Reykjavík a day before the tour begins. If you are travelling independently, register your plans and check alerts at Safetravel.is, Iceland’s official travel safety site. For answers to more questions, from money to clothing, see our questions about Iceland guide.

Seeing Iceland on our Iceland cultural and wilderness small group tour

Odyssey Traveller has organised small group tours for mature travellers since 1983, and our Iceland cultural and wilderness small group tour is a 17-day circuit of the island from Reykjavík, in a small group of up to 16 with an Odyssey Program Leader. Day 2 includes a lecture on contemporary Iceland, the National Museum and the Blue Lagoon; Day 3 visits Thingvellir; and Day 4 circles the Snaefellsnes Peninsula. Whale watching from Husavik comes on Day 10, a boat ride among the icebergs of Jokulsarlon and time walking at Skaftafell on Day 13, and Skogafoss and the cliffs at Dyrholaey on Day 14. On Day 16 the group returns to Reykjavík by way of Gullfoss and the Strokkur geyser.

Further reading

You may also want to read these related articles:

• Iceland small group tours for mature travellers
• Iceland Ring Road itinerary: a 17-day circumnavigation
• Egilsstadir, East Iceland
• Lunar landscapes in Iceland
• Touring World Heritage sites

As an extension to the Iceland tour, Odyssey also offers Discover Greenland.