An Expedition Across Iceland

This is one crazy expedition across Iceland, up into the highlands from the North, towards Hofsjökull glacier, across the glacier, and then paddling down Þjórsá, Iceland's longest river. Undertaken by professional adventurer and author Alastair Humphreys and photographer Chris Herwig. 

View their Iceland Expedition kit list here and the gear review here.

Alastair is a writer and has published a few books including Micro adventures, local discoveries for great escapes, pointing out the fact that adventure is closer than you think and doesn't need a long-distance travel. 

Vikings Crossing Africa: Reykjavik to Capetown

A group of 15 adventurous people are leaving Iceland today enroute to Capetown in South Africa, traveling over 20 countries and taking 6 months. Vikings Crossing Africa is organized by Gary Taylor who's teaming up with seven Icelanders, two Swedes, two Britons, an American, a Canadian, and an Italian.

The plan is to take a ferry from Iceland today to Europe and then drive south through Europe and Africa in a beat up Bedford Mk 4x4 army truck. Sounds like a cool plan. You an follow their progress on their blog.

Airlines flying to Iceland

There is an explosive growth in the Icelandic tourism sector. There are now more airlines flying to and from Iceland than anytime before. A decade ago there were only two airlines servicing Iceland, maybe three during the summer. Now there are no less than eighteen airlines.

Three Icelandic airlines:

• Icelandair 
• Air Iceland 
• Iceland Express 
• WOWair 

12 European airlines:

• Air Berlin
• Atlantic Airways
• Austrian Airlines
• Finnair
• Germanwings
• KLM
• Lufthansa
• Niki
• Norwegian
• SAS
• Transavia France
• easyJet

And two North-American airlines:

• Delta Air Lines
• Air Greenland (I list them as N-American although they are Danish). 

This list is only going to grow. I met some people from Delta last year when they had their inaugural flight to JFK. Of all the US carriers, Delta is the one that breaks into new markets, with other US airlines following suit.  Delta has great connection options in JFK from cities across the US.  Icelandair services several North-American airports such as JFK, Seattle, Denver, DC, Boston, Minneapolis, Orlando and Toronto and has great interline agreements with airline partners such as JetBlue and Alaskan.

Icelandair actually specializes in connecting Europe and North-America. Their route network is optimized for connecting their European and American flights. And since they connect via Iceland, they offer more destination options between the two continents than most other airlines of similar size (e.g. Denver-Paris, Seattle-Stavanger, Washington-Stockholm, Toronto-Barcelona, etc.)

World Map: Countries Visited

Not that many countries actually. Greenland, Canada and the United States make up a lot of red space and make you think I've been all over. I've actually been to quite a few US states. Add Russia, China and Australia, and it will cover an even larger area.


visited 23 states (10.2%)
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North of the arctic circle

If anyone is interested in exploring the arctic region, I highly recommend you visit Ilulissat in North-West Greenland. Ilulissat is the third largest settlement in Greenland (population 4.546) and is near the famous Ilulissat Icefjord, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Ilulissat is approximately 250 km north of the arctic circle and the best way to reach it is by airplane or helicopter. We flew in from Reykjavik, Iceland, in an Air Iceland Dash 8 airplane. The runway at the Ilulissat airport is too short for most planes.
All in all we had a great time exploring the area. We stayed at Hotel Arctic, a nice four star hotel with an amazing view of the Disco bay with all its icebergs. I also recommend you visit the small settlement of Oquaatsut, just north of Ilulissat. You can reach it by speedboat in the summer or by a dog sled ride in the winter.  They just opened a nice little hotel there recently Nordlys Hotel (Northern Lights Hotel), a five room, not a five star, hotel. Small, clean, quiet and comfortable, away from it all. Managed by a great