14 Life-Changing Experiences You Can Only Have in Iceland

Experience Iceland’s magic for yourself – book Culture Trip’s five-day Iceland tour and immerse yourself in this spectacular destination.

Check out Kjarvalstaðir in Reykjavik, an art museum devoted to the beloved Icelandic landscape painter, Johannes Kjarval, whose works may invite you to see the real landscape in a totally new perspective.

Road trips can be pretty life-changing depending on a number of factors, including the people you’re on the journey with, the music you’re listening to and the weird hitchhikers you pick up on the way.

In many hidden places in Iceland, you can find pools of natural rock formations where a geothermal pool has formed. Immersed in the earth in such a way, you could feel alive in a whole new way.

The sight of the Aurora Borealis neon lights dancing in the night sky is awe-inspiring. You simply have to experience it first hand.

The Geysir hot spring area has a dozen boiling pits; the most active, Strokkur, spouts to heights of 30m (100ft) – a remarkable sight.

This sculptural formation on the south coast of Iceland is shaped by the waves on the coast, creating a timeless effect.

This glacial lake in southeast Iceland contains luminous blue icebergs, calving from the largest glacier by volume in Europe, Vatnajökull. The sight of these huge masses of ice eddying so slowly in the lagoon as they make their way from being part of a glacier to melting in the sea is quite a sight. Keeping in mind why they are calving from the glaciers is equally potent for a life-changing experience.

With so much water, it’s unsurprising that Iceland is covered in amazing waterfalls. Svartifoss, for example, is 12m (40ft) high and framed by black columnar basalt, in Vatnajökull National Park, but it is only one of many of Iceland’s numerous waterfalls.

This crater, formed during a prehistoric eruption, was itself formed during an 1875 eruption. Víti’s colour ranges from milky green to pearly blue and you can bathe here, but getting here is quite a journey as it is in the remote highlands in central Iceland. Plus you need to make a steep descent to reach its shores.

This wonder is the site of the world’s first democracy in 930CE. Fittingly, it is also where the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates meet. This historically significant place can bring many insights as you walk through the moss-covered canyon.

Considered the Icelandic National Mountain, and sometimes dubbed the Queen, this flat-topped mountain in the Central Highlands is the sole figure rising out of the desert. It’s an incredibly sight from a long distance if you’re driving past, or you can hike to enjoy the view from on top.

Within Snæfellsjökull National Park lies this 1,200m (4,000ft) glacier, which inspired Jules Verne in his 1864 novel, A Journey to the Center of the Earth. Like the science fiction classic that uses the location for its mythical entryway, the place itself holds a similarly mythical quality.

This site-specific sound sculpture, designed by German artist Lukas Kühne, is located near the artistic haven Seyðisfjörður in eastern Iceland. Built out of concrete, the five domes, of varying sizes, are interconnected and correspond to the Icelandic musical tradition of five-tone harmony. The sculpture, built in 2012, is always open and can be reached by a short walk from the village. If you want a life-changing moment in how you experience sound, this is the place.

In the remote valley of Sélardalur in the Westfjörds, this unusual collection of sculptures and paintings by outsider artist Samúel Jónsson can be found. The reclusive farmer turned artist passed away in 1969. Scattered around a museum and a chapel the artist built himself, the collection is now maintained by independent and government organisations and represents the artist’s rich imaginative life.