Hi, I recently joined SlowTravel. I found out about this site from my National Geographic Travel Mag. I love to travel and photograph! I am particularly found of out of the way places, away from the cities. I am working on planning a trip to Iceland and the Faroe Islands. I have begun collecting info. I saw several people post about the expense of Iceland - and read a blog by "elizabeth_s" which was informative. Does anyone have a suggestion for when the best time to go is? I found that when I've traveled around Denmark/Sweden/Finland/Norway I've greatly prefered the non-tourist seasons - even the winter (dec/jan), but I'm not sure if that is a good time to visit Iceland. Also - has anyone visited the Faroe Islands?

I look forward to hearing from any of you in the community.

Des

Hi Des, and welcome to Slow Travel!

In 2000 I made a not very slow trip to Iceland, being unable to resist the stopover allowed by my flight on Icelandic Airlines. Having so little time, I had planned to stay at an inexpensive B&B in Reykjavik and just take a quick look around, but couldn't find anything (via the Net) that fit into my very modest budget.

So I started to look further afield, and ran across Hekluhestar, a volcano-side farm 100 km east of Reykjavik where they raise sheep and Icelandic ponies and take visitors on riding tours. The prices were very reasonable.

I arranged a car rental and made a reservation, and from the airport drove a few hours (not sure of the timing because I mosied a bit) through a landscape like nothing I'd ever seen before, earth in the process of growing a new skin, with incredibly intense black foundations and velvety emerald green veins opening out into wide treeless fields under vast skies whose energetically piled clouds were more the equivalent of the landscapes I was used to than the ground was.

Sice I was there at the end of September the trail riding season was over, but it happened to be just at the time when the family needed to bring the sheep in from their summer pastures on the side of the volcano (Mt. Hekla), and they invited me to join them in the roundup even though I hadn't ridden in decades. The people were wonderful (she is French, he speaks some English and the children were already fluent in English), the food was delicious, the horses were small, tough,full of character and used to strangers. Altogether a most memorable experience, and a very different way of life.

The few pictures I have don't begin to do justice to the colors and expanses, but they may give you some hints.

My impression is that the Northern part of Iceland is quite different, full of forests and waterfalls. If you have more time it would be easy to make the circuit, since there seems to be one main highway that goes around the whole country, and areas of special interest (geysers, glaciers, caves, historic sites) are clearly marked on the tourist maps.

Hi,

I would not recommend a first visit of Iceland in the deep winter. Iceland is almost at the Arctic circle, what means there is VERY little daylight around the winter solstice. There are still many things to do, but you will miss most of the unbelievable landspace as it will be hidden under the cover of the 20 hours of darkness per day.

I have visited Iceland in July 2006 and in many places there were quite too many turists to my taste. On the other hand the weather was at least tolerable, unlike the general "almost always rainy" climate. So there is probably no solution to it - either you go in the high season with the others or you face the risk of some very unpleasant weather. Even in July it is very cold, with many days of tempretarures not higher than +5 degrees of Celsius.

It is very difficult to express how different Iceland is from everything I have seen so far. Even the "more peaceful" northern part (with much better weather than in the south) is almost free of trees (the largest forest in the whole country has at most several sq. km and it is a national monument!), the rest is an arctic desert, a harsh tundra with several scattered trees or just dark fresh lava plain.

It is true that Iceland is an expensive country, but like anywhere, you can get almost every kind of budget you wish. I did a 4-weeks trip in Iceland for about 400 Euros (including the flight from Germany and back) but I am far from being a typical Slow traveller (this budget was accomplished by sleeping in a tent, hitch-hiking and propan-butan stove cooking all the time).

Anyway, if you visit Iceland, you will surely get an experience for the whole liftime.

Jan

I have not yet been to Iceland but I am now fairly certain that Pam and I shall be going to the Færoe Isles in July.
A friend who went for the first time in hotels a couple of years back is taking a house and has invited us to join her for part of the time. I guess that says a lot about her opinion of it.