Visit South Iceland

Why visit South Iceland

South Iceland is the country's greatest hits compilation — the Suðurland region holds the Golden Circle, the South Coast, the Reykjanes peninsula (Blue Lagoon country, where the 2021 Fagradalsfjall volcano famously erupted into accessibility), the lush highland valley of Þórsmörk, the volcanic Westman Islands (puffin colonies and the 1973 eruption that nearly buried Heimaey), and most of the country's accessible glaciers within a day-trip radius of Reykjavík. The diversity is the point: in a single 3–4 day driving loop you can stand between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates at Þingvellir, watch Strokkur geyser erupt every 8 minutes, soak in the genuinely otherworldly Blue Lagoon, walk on a glacier in Skógar, snowmobile across the Mýrdalsjökull icecap, and finish at the iceberg-strewn Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon. The Highland routes to Landmannalaugar and Þórsmörk (4x4 only, open roughly mid-June to mid-September) put you in colour-streaked rhyolite mountains and natural hot rivers that feel like another planet. Iceland's most active volcanoes — Hekla, Katla, Eyjafjallajökull — all sit in this region, and the country's southwestern lava fields are the youngest in Europe.