Reykjavik is the world's northernmost capital and arguably the most surprising. The tourist industry has sold Iceland so effectively — the Northern Lights, the geothermal pools, the puffins — that the city itself gets lost in the conversation. What Reykjavik actually offers is something different: a genuinely small city (population 130,000) with an arts and music scene completely disproportionate to its size, a food culture that has evolved from preserved lamb and skyr to some of the most innovative Nordic cooking in Scandinavia, and a population density that means you're having a conversation with a local within fifteen minutes of arriving.
This guide is for the traveller who wants more than the Golden Circle tour. It's for someone who wants to understand what Icelanders actually eat for breakfast (skyr, obviously, but also hákarl if you're brave and genuinely curious), how the local swimming pool system works and why it's the centre of Icelandic social life, and why the Reykjavik art museum is one of the finest small art museums in northern Europe.
Iceland is expensive. This is the foundational fact. Everything costs more than you expect and the best strategy is to lean into the self-catering options, use the supermarkets (Bónus and Kronan are the affordable chains), and save the restaurant budget for one or two genuinely extraordinary meals rather than three mediocre ones per day.
1. Laugardalslaug Swimming Pool
The swimming pool (sundlaug) is the centre of Icelandic social life — a tradition of outdoor geothermal pools where the water is always warm, the conversation is always interesting, and entry costs ISK 1,000 (approximately €7). Laugardalslaug, the largest in Reykjavik, has multiple outdoor hot pots (gradually increasing temperatures from 38°C to 44°C), a large outdoor main pool, water slides, and a steam room. On a crisp October afternoon with light snow and steam rising from the water, it is one of the finest social experiences Iceland offers.
The sundlaug tradition is rooted in Iceland's geothermal geology — the hot water that heats Icelandic homes also fills the swimming pools, making the pools essentially free to heat. The result is a tradition of daily pool use that functions as both physical infrastructure and social institution: business deals, first dates, political arguments, and personal crises are all conducted in the hot pots. The rule is that you must shower thoroughly (without a swimsuit) before entering the pools — the Icelandic approach to hygiene in public pools is strict and serious.
Laugardalslaug is in the Laugardalur neighbourhood east of the city centre. Bus route 14 from Hlemmur square. Open weekdays 6:30am–10pm, weekends 8am–10pm. Admission ISK 1,100 (roughly €7.50). Towel hire ISK 800. The pool complex also includes an outdoor paddling pool, a hot pot, and a cold outdoor plunge pool. The most social experience is in the hot pots, which hold 20–40 people in close proximity — conversation starts naturally and continues until someone gets too hot. The water temperature ranges give you natural conversation pause points as people move between pots.
The Blue Lagoon (the famous commercial geothermal resort near the airport) is expensive (€60–80+ per person), crowded, and not representative of the Icelandic pool tradition. The local sundlaug is cheaper, more authentic, and more rewarding. Every Reykjavik neighbourhood has its own pool; Sundhöll Reykjavíkur in the city centre (Barónsstígur 45) is the oldest and most atmospheric, with a beautiful Art Deco interior and the finest hot pot in the city centre. Admission identical to Laugardalslaug.
2. Reykjavik Art Museum: Hafnarhús
The Reykjavik Art Museum is divided across three buildings; the Hafnarhús (Harbour House) branch near the old harbour is the most significant — a converted fishing industry warehouse that holds a large collection of works by Erró (the Icelandic pop artist who donated his life's work to the museum), a strong programme of contemporary international shows, and a remarkable permanent collection of Icelandic modernism. The combination gives a compressed but genuinely serious art education in a building that feels alive and properly used rather than archival.
Erró (Guðmundur Guðmundsson, born 1932) is one of Iceland's most significant visual artists — a pop art and photomontage practitioner who worked in Paris alongside Hiquily, Jean-Jacques Lebel, and Matta, and whose work combines the visual vocabulary of mass media with surrealist juxtaposition to create large-format paintings of extraordinary density. The permanent Erró collection fills several galleries; it's a genuinely extraordinary body of work and largely unknown outside Iceland and France.
The Hafnarhús is on Tryggvagata 17, near the old harbour in the city centre. Open daily 10am–5pm (Thursdays until 10pm). Admission ISK 2,200 (€15) covers all three Reykjavik Art Museum buildings for 24 hours — an excellent deal if you're visiting both Hafnarhús and Kjarvalsstaðir (the second branch, specialising in Icelandic landscape painting by Jóhannes Kjarval). Thursdays are pay-what-you-wish evenings.
The building's conversion from a fish processing warehouse is sympathetic — the industrial bones are visible in the exposed roof trusses and concrete floors, which work extremely well as a gallery environment. The harbour view from the upper level windows takes in the old fishing boats, the Harpa concert hall (Henning Larsen Architects, 2011 — one of the finest concert hall buildings in Europe), and on clear days the mountain Esja across the bay. The combination of contemporary architecture and industrial heritage in this area of the harbour is the finest piece of urban planning in Reykjavik.
3. Old Harbour Fish Market Morning
The old harbour (Gamla höfnin) is the historic heart of Reykjavik's fishing industry — now primarily a whale-watching and puffin-tour departure point, but still with working fishing boats and, in the morning hours, a small fish market that sells that day's catch directly to anyone who wants it. The Kolaportið market, in a large warehouse near the harbour, runs weekends and is the finest flea market and food market in Iceland.
The Kolaportið flea market (open Saturday and Sunday 11am–5pm) is the only place in Iceland where you can simultaneously buy fermented skate (hákarl), canned shark, hand-knitted Icelandic wool sweaters (lopapeysa) from individual knitters at fair prices, vintage Icelandic records, and the occasional extraordinary piece of mid-century Icelandic design at prices that haven't been inflated for the tourist market. The food section has the best selection of traditional Icelandic preserved fish, rye bread, and dairy products in the city.
Walk north from Lækjartorg square toward the harbour — the Kolaportið building is on the right side of the harbour road. The fish market at the dock (mornings, roughly 7–11am on weekday mornings when boats return) sells fresh catch directly — a practice that's increasingly rare in European cities but still happens in Reykjavik. The working fishing vessels alongside the tourist boats are still operating daily and the morning unloading is worth observing. Several of the harbour fish restaurants (Sægreifinn, Kaffivagninn) source directly from these boats.
Sægreifinn ("the Sea Baron") at the harbour is Reykjavik's most famous simple fish restaurant — a hut serving lobster soup (humarsúpa, ISK 2,000, extraordinary) and grilled fish on skewers to a clientele of equal parts tourists and Reykjavik construction workers on their lunch break. It's exactly the right combination. Open daily from 11:30am; arrive before noon for a table without queuing. The lobster soup alone is worth the visit — a deep, rich bisque with chunks of fresh lobster tail, served with bread and butter.
4. Laugavegur Street After 11pm
Laugavegur is Reykjavik's main commercial street by day — a mix of tourist shops, coffee shops, and Icelandic design boutiques. After 11pm on a Friday or Saturday, it becomes something else: the launch point for the rúntur, the traditional Icelandic pub crawl. The Icelandic drinking culture has a specific rhythm — people pre-drink at home to manage the extraordinary bar prices (ISK 1,500–2,000, €10–14, for a beer), then arrive at the bars late and stay until the bars close at 4am or 5am. The result is an extremely late and extremely enthusiastic nightlife that the city has embraced as part of its identity.
The rúntur concentrates on several bars between the Hlemmur end of Laugavegur and the harbour — Kaffibarinn (co-owned by Damon Albarn), Húrra, Bar Ananas, and the Lebowski Bar are reliable options for different moods. The music in the bars ranges from Icelandic folk to electronic to the kind of late-night pop that works when everyone has been drinking since midnight. The later it gets, the less distinction there is between tourist and resident, which is both the point and the pleasure.
The daytime Laugavegur is the best shopping street in Iceland for authentic Icelandic products: 66°North (Icelandic technical outdoor clothing, expensive but genuinely excellent — their wool base layers are among the finest in Europe), Aurum (Icelandic gold and silver jewellery using local materials and forms), Farmers & Friends (Icelandic design collective shop, distinctive and original). The independent bookshop Bóksala Stúdenta on Háskólinn has the best English-language section on Icelandic literature and history, including all the Halldór Laxness (Iceland's only Nobel Literature laureate) in translation.
The best coffee on Laugavegur is at Reykjavik Roasters (Kárastígur 1, one block south of the main street) — a serious specialty coffee roaster that supplies most of Reykjavik's independent cafés and has a café space of its own that is the meeting point for Iceland's design, tech, and arts community on weekday mornings. Single origin espresso ISK 700; the cardamom cinnamon bun (snúður) is ISK 600 and extraordinary. The same café on a Sunday morning at 10am is one of the finest places in Reykjavik to observe Icelanders recovering from the rúntur in a state of cheerful resilience.
5. Hallgrímskirkja Tower and Surrounding Streets
The Hallgrímskirkja church (1974, designed by Guðjón Samúelsson and inspired by basalt lava column formations) is Reykjavik's visual landmark — the tower is visible from anywhere in the city and the interior, with its extraordinary organ and geometric nave, is one of the finest spaces of Lutheran church architecture in Scandinavia. The tower lift (ISK 1,000, open daily from 9am) provides the best 360-degree view over the city available anywhere. On clear days you can see the mountains in every direction.
The church took 41 years to build (1945–86) — the tower first, the nave last, the construction funded by voluntary contributions from Iceland's population. The resulting building reflects that gradual investment: each section is slightly different in material quality and detail, and the totality is more interesting than a conventional commissioned building would be. The architect Samúelsson drew on Icelandic natural formations — basalt columns, glacial geometry — in a way that makes the building feel simultaneously modernist and ancient.
The streets around Hallgrímskirkja — Skólavörðustígur (the street leading directly to the church) and the surrounding Þingholt neighbourhood — are Reykjavik's art and gallery district. Skólavörðustígur has independent art galleries, print workshops, a yarn shop selling authentic Icelandic wool, and the Icelandic Handknitting Association's shop (Handknit from Iceland, certified traditional lopapeysa available ISK 20,000–35,000 — not cheap but genuinely hand-knitted and authentic). The print studio Prentsmiðja Íslands on the same street does excellent limited-edition Icelandic landscape prints.
The Leif Erikson statue in front of Hallgrímskirkja (a gift from the United States, placed here in 1930 for the 1,000th anniversary of the Alþingi parliament) faces west toward America — the direction Leif sailed circa 1000 AD to become the first European known to reach the North American continent. The statue's positioning is simultaneously triumphant and slightly absurd, which is entirely in keeping with the Icelandic relationship to its own extraordinary history. The church is open daily for visits outside service times; the organ is played for concerts most Friday evenings (ISK 1,500–3,500).
6. Þingvellir National Park: Beyond the Tourist Path
Þingvellir (Thingvellir) is on every Golden Circle tour — the site of Iceland's ancient parliament (established 930 AD), the place where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates are visibly pulling apart, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site of both geological and historical significance. The tourist path concentrates on the Lögberg (Law Rock) and the Öxará river valley. Walk ten minutes in any direction from the main visitor path and you'll have the extraordinary landscape almost entirely to yourself.
The rift valley is 40 kilometres long and at the Þingvellir section it's possible to walk between the two continental plates on a clear path through the Almannagjá rift — a 5-kilometre gorge of vertical basalt that marks the plate boundary. The water in the Silfra fissure (the freshwater-filled crack between the two plates) is some of the clearest in the world — clarity of 100+ metres, the result of decades of glacial filtration through lava rock. Snorkelling and diving in Silfra require advance booking with a licensed operator (approximately ISK 25,000–30,000 per person).
Þingvellir is 45 kilometres east of Reykjavik on Route 36. The park is free to enter (small parking fee ISK 750 per car). The Visitor Centre (free, open daily 9am–6pm in summer, shorter hours in winter) has excellent geology and history interpretation in English. The hiking trail south from the Lögberg along the Öxará river to the church (Þingvallakirkja, one of Iceland's oldest) takes 30 minutes and is almost always quiet away from the main tourist overlook. Continue further south and the landscape opens into a completely empty volcanic plain with the Langjökull glacier visible in the distance.
Þingvellir in winter is extraordinary — the rift walls sometimes ice-over, the Öxará river is partially frozen, and the low sun casts the basalt columns in an orange-red light that the summer sun never produces. The Northern Lights are occasionally visible above the park on clear winter nights. The park has several cabins available for overnight stays (book through the national park authority website) — staying overnight and experiencing the park before the first car parks open at 9am gives an experience of the silence that the place was designed to produce.
7. National Museum of Iceland
The National Museum on Suðurgata is the finest museum in Iceland — a comprehensive account of Icelandic history from the Settlement period (874 AD) through the medieval saga age, the Black Death, the volcanic eruptions, the fishing industry transformation, and independence from Denmark (achieved in 1944). The collection includes extraordinary Viking-age artefacts (including the Valþjófsstaður door, a 12th-century carved wooden church door of remarkable quality), the settlement-era farm tools, and the complete social history of a community that survived for 1,100 years at the edge of the habitable world.
The museum was reorganised and expanded in 2004 and is now one of the finest presentations of national history in Scandinavia. The medieval section is particularly strong — the saga literature (Njáls saga, Grænlendinga saga, Egils saga) is the world's finest vernacular literature from the Middle Ages, and the museum contextualises it within the physical and social world that produced it. The original manuscripts are in Copenhagen (taken there during the Danish period) but excellent facsimiles and explanatory material are present.
Find it at Suðurgata 41, near the University of Iceland. Bus 1 or 14 from the city centre. Open daily 10am–5pm (Tuesday until 10pm). Admission ISK 2,500 (€17). The Tuesday evening admission is free from 5pm — crowded but worthwhile. The gift shop has the finest selection of books on Icelandic history, archaeology, and landscape in any Reykjavik institution; the children's activity section in the basement is well-designed and genuinely engaging for families. The café is acceptable; the building's cafeteria serves open sandwiches and traditional Icelandic lamb soup (kjötsúpa, ISK 1,800) at lunch.
The university campus around the museum is worth walking — the main university building (Aðalbygging, 1940) is a handsome Arts and Crafts structure in dark basalt, with a panoramic view over the university lake (Tjörnin) toward the Ráðhús (City Hall) and the city centre. The Tjörnin lake is populated by 40 species of birds year-round and is a significant bird sanctuary in the middle of the city. Arctic terns (kría) nest here and defend their territory with aggressive dive-bombing of any human who approaches — this is a fact you will discover rather than read about.
8. Videy Island
Videy Island, a 15-minute ferry from Reykjavik harbour, is a small island of 2 kilometres with an extraordinary history: Iceland's first stone church (1774–75), the ruins of the first large estate house, and the installation "Imagine Peace Tower" by Yoko Ono — a column of white light beamed upward toward the sky, activated each year from John Lennon's birthday (October 9th) to the anniversary of his death (December 8th). In winter, the tower is one of the most moving public art works in Iceland.
The island was inhabited from the settlement period and served as a prosperous estate in the medieval period. The church of Viðeyjarkirkja (1774) is the oldest stone church in Iceland and still structurally intact. The ruins of the adjacent Garðar estate buildings date from the 18th century. The rest of the island is flat grassland populated by nesting eider ducks and the occasional curious Arctic fox. The ferry landing at Sundahöfn takes you to the north end; a walking circuit of the island takes 45 minutes.
Ferries run from Skarfabakki pier in the old harbour, mid-May to mid-October. Journey 7 minutes; cost ISK 2,000 return. In winter, special ferries run during the Imagine Peace Tower season (October–December) — check the Reykjavik City website for the schedule. The island has no permanent facilities — no café, no accommodation — so bring provisions if you're spending more than an hour.
The Imagine Peace Tower activates at dusk during its operational period and the beam is visible for miles around the island and from several points in Reykjavik. On a clear winter night with Northern Lights possibly playing overhead, the column of white light rising into the Icelandic sky is one of the most extraordinary public art experiences available in Europe. Yoko Ono attends the lighting ceremony annually; the event is free and open to the public, typically drawing 2,000–5,000 people to the island in the middle of an October night in the North Atlantic. Dress very warmly.
9. Hafnarfjörður Lava Field Walk
Hafnarfjörður, 10 kilometres south of Reykjavik (connected by the Strætó bus 1 or the Capital Area route), is a town built within a lava field — the streets wind around and over old lava flows that were never levelled, and the town centre is a labyrinth of volcanic rock outcrops with houses and shops tucked into the spaces between. The lava field is one of the most extraordinary urban landscapes in the world and the walk through it — following the marked Heritage Trail through the old town — is one of the finest things you can do within the Reykjavik area.
The Hafnarfjörður lava field (Kapelluhraun) was created by eruptions approximately 7,500 years ago and has been inhabited since the 11th century. The Settlement-era farms are documented in the sagas; by the 17th century it was an important trading post for English and German merchants. The harbour, still functional, is the focus of a good Friday fish market and the restaurants around it are cheaper than central Reykjavik by 20–30%.
The town has a small Viking festival in June (Fjörukráin — "Shore House") that is more serious about historical accuracy than most such events and includes genuine craftspeople demonstrating Viking-age skills. The Fjörukráin Viking restaurant near the harbour serves traditional Icelandic food in a Viking-age setting that is theatrical but not entirely inauthentic — the smoked lamb (hangikjöt) and the skyr with blueberries are genuinely excellent. Dinner ISK 4,000–7,000 per head.
The bus journey from Reykjavik to Hafnarfjörður takes 25 minutes (ISK 570 single, bus 1 from Hlemmur). The Heritage Trail map is available from the Hafnarfjörður museum or can be downloaded from the town's website. The full trail takes 1.5 hours including stops; it passes the best-preserved sections of the lava field, the historic harbour buildings, and the Siggubær museum in the old mayor's house. Museum admission ISK 1,000; the collection covers the town's fishing and trading history with good English language interpretation.
10. Reykjanes Peninsula Geothermal Landscape
The Reykjanes Peninsula, stretching southwest from Reykjavik toward the international airport, is one of the most geologically active landscapes in Europe — a peninsula of fresh lava fields, active volcanic vents, boiling mud pools, and coastline where the North Atlantic meets in extraordinary sea stacks and sea arches. Unlike the tourist-saturated Golden Circle to the northeast, the Reykjanes attracts relatively few visitors outside the Blue Lagoon, and the active geological processes are visible in a raw, unmediated form that the gentler landscapes of the interior don't provide.
The Gunnuhver hot spring field near Grindavík (on the southwestern tip of the peninsula) has 100°C boiling mud and steam vents accessible on boardwalks from a free car park — a genuinely dramatic geothermal experience at no cost. The Reykjanesviti lighthouse, the oldest in Iceland (1878), stands on the cliff above a tectonic rift where the Eurasian and North American plates pull apart visibly in the landscape (the rift continues underwater as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge). The bridge between the continents — a footbridge over the rift — is a small but genuinely moving piece of infrastructure.
Drive the Route 41 west from Reykjavik toward Keflavík and continue south on Route 425 to reach Gunnuhver (approximately 50 minutes from the city). The entire peninsula is accessible on a day trip; the coastline road south of Grindavík to the Selatangar ruins (an abandoned 16th-century fishing camp on the sea cliffs, free, absolutely wild and atmospheric) is one of the finest drives in Iceland. The new volcanic eruptions in the Svartsengi area (from 2023 onward) have added fresh lava flows visible from the road — check current conditions before visiting the affected areas.
The peninsula has no significant tourist infrastructure outside Grindavík and the Blue Lagoon — bring food, water, and full weather protection. The weather on the Reykjanes changes extremely fast and the wind can be severe. The combination of active volcanic landscape, accessible from Reykjavik in an hour, with no other tourists visible, is one of the most extraordinary natural experiences available in Iceland without entering the highlands or the remote fjords. The contrast between the jet-plane noise from Keflavík airport overhead and the boiling mud 50 metres below your feet is Reykjanes in a single image.
