Insight Guides - Insight Guides Explore Iceland (Travel Guide eBook)

How To Use This E-Book

This Explore Guide has been produced by the editors of Insight Guides, whose books have set the standard for visual travel guides since 1970. With top-quality photography and authoritative recommendations, these guidebooks bring you the very best routes and itineraries in the worlds most exciting destinations.

Best Routes

The routes in this book provide something to suit all budgets, tastes and trip lengths. As well as covering the destinations many classic attractions, the itineraries track lesser-known sights, and there are also excursions for those who want to extend their visit. The routes embrace a range of interests, so whether you are an art fan, a gourmet, a history buff or have kids to entertain, you will find an option to suit.

We recommend reading the whole of a route before setting out. This should help you to familiarise yourself with it and enable you to plan where to stop for refreshments options are shown in the Food and Drink box at the end of each tour.

Introduction

The routes are set in context by this introductory section, giving an overview of the destination to set the scene, plus background information on food and drink, shopping and more, while a succinct history timeline highlights the key events over the centuries.

Directory

Also supporting the routes is a Directory chapter, with a clearly organised AZ of practical information, our pick of where to stay while you are there and select restaurant listings; these eateries complement the more low-key cafs and restaurants that feature within the routes and are intended to offer a wider choice for evening dining. Also included here are some nightlife listings, plus a handy language guide and our recommendations for books and films about the destination.

Getting around the e-book

In the Table of Contents and throughout this e-book you will see hyperlinked references. Just tap a hyperlink once to skip to the section you would like to read. Practical information and listings are also hyperlinked, so as long as you have an external connection to the internet, you can tap a link to go directly to the website for more information.

Maps

All key attractions and sights mentioned in the text are numbered and cross-referenced to high-quality maps. Wherever you see the reference [map] just tap this to go straight to the related map. You can also double-tap any map for a zoom view.

Images

Youll find lots of beautiful high-resolution images that capture the essence of the destination. Simply double-tap on an image to see it full-screen.

2018 Apa Digital (CH) AG and Apa Publications (UK) Ltd

Table of Contents

Recommended Routes For...

Foodies

Reykjavk ().

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Island fun

Visit friendly Heimaey ().

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Music lovers

Harpa concert hall in Reykjavk ().

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Natural wonders

Rumbling volcanoes and multicoloured mudpots abound round Mvatn ().

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Pampering

Icelands many geothermal pools and spas are a bathers delight. Most famous are the Blue Lagoon ().

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Vikings and sagas

Get a saga overview at the Settlement Centre in Borgarnes ().

Ming Tang-Evans/Apa Publications

Walkers

Vatnajkull National Park has beautiful walks and multiday hikes at Skaftafell ().

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Wildlife

Hsavk ().

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Explore Iceland

Iceland is a place of dramatic contrasts: bleak and blasted, yet intensely beautiful; full of grinding ice and fiery eruptions; with a tiny capital city that generates a huge amount of quirky, energetic culture.

Settled by the Vikings, drawn by the allure of a fresh and empty land, Icelanders have always survived on their foresight, imagination and wits. Although Iceland has a long, rich cultural history, stretching back to the Saga Age, it is the land itself, sculpted by the forces of nature into a unique, ever-changing landscape, that tells the countrys most compelling story.

Geography and layout

Iceland covers 103,000 sq km (40,000 sq miles) of land, but is sparsely populated, with just three people per square kilometre. Sixty-four percent of Icelanders live in the capital area, and five percent in the second northern city, Akureyri. The rest of Iceland is empty, save for scattered farms and small fishing villages dotted around the coast. Sixty-two percent of the country is classified as a wasteland: the whole interior is a hostile uninhabited high desert. Europes largest glacier, Vatnajkull, squats over 8,400 sq km (3,200 sq miles) of the southeast, its subglacial volcanoes wreaking havoc on the surrounding regions when they erupt.

Iceland straddles the North Atlantic Ridge, where two of the tectonic plates making up the Earths surface are slowly tearing apart. The country is literally being torn in two, widening at a rate of roughly 2cm (0.8ins) annually. Earthquakes and volcanic activity are commonplace along the huge diagonal double-pronged fault line, running from Reykjanes and the Vestmannaeyjar in the southwest to Krafla in the northeast.

In geological terms, Iceland is a mere baby, composed of some of the youngest rocks on earth and still being formed. Over the centuries, eruptions have spewed vast fields of lava across the islands surface and projected choking clouds of ash high into the air, blocking out the sunlight and blighting crops. Every day there are thousands of minor earthquakes and shocks, most of which are only detectable by seismologists.

The presence of so much natural energy just below ground makes it possible not just to see the awesome power of nature in Iceland, but also to feel, hear and smell it.

Getting around