Iceland attractions

Tjarnarbíó Theater

Tjarnarbíó is Reykjavík's independent theater, a nonprofit venue in a 1913 ice house at Tjarnargata 12, on the edge of the Tjörnin pond next to City Hall. It is where the city's independent theater companies stage their work, with support from the City of Reykjavík. The building first stored ice cut from the pond for Iceland's iced-fish exports, and it was one of three ice houses by Tjörnin (another now holds the National Gallery of Iceland). In 1942 the University of Iceland turned it into a cinema with almost 400 seats, which explains the name, since bíó means cinema. Iceland's association of independent theater groups has run the house since 1995. After a major rebuild that added a café on the north side, it reopened in 2010 as their permanent stage. The season runs from late August to the end of June, with four to seven events a week on a main stage that seats 180 and a small café stage for around 60. Expect new Icelandic plays, dance, circus, opera, stand-up and children's shows. Most work is in Icelandic, but the venue keeps a list of English-language and wordless events on its own site, and that list is worth checking before you buy. Most main-stage shows start at 8:30 pm, while small-stage events usually begin at 5:30 pm. Tickets are sold online, and the box office answers the phone on weekdays from 1 to 5 pm and for an hour before each event. Prices vary by show. Tjarnarbarinn, the café-bar, opens an hour before performances and lets you carry your drink into the hall. The building is wheelchair accessible, and staff ask you to mention it when booking so they can prepare. Because the theater sits right on the pond, a show here pairs well with an evening walk around Tjörnin or dinner in the old town.

Perlan Parking

Perlan parking is the free lot right outside Perlan, the glass-domed museum on top of Öskjuhlíð hill in Reykjavík, with disabled spaces close to the entrance. After the paid zones of downtown, that is a welcome change. From the city center it's about a 5-minute drive up the hill. If you'd rather leave the car at your hotel, buses 13 and 18 stop closest to Perlan, and the walk up from downtown takes about 30 minutes. The parking lot also works as a trailhead for the Öskjuhlíð woods. Paths lead down through the trees to Nauthólsvík geothermal beach and the Fossvogur coastal path, so you can park once and spend a few hours on foot. On clear winter nights the hilltop is higher and darker than the streets below, which makes it a decent place in the city to watch for the northern lights. If you're heading inside, the Perlan museum exhibitions are open 9:00 to 21:00. The observation deck that circles the dome is included with every ticket and can't be bought on its own, so allow a couple of hours to see the exhibitions and the view together.

Akureyri Art Museum

Akureyri Art Museum (Listasafnið á Akureyri) is the main visual art museum in North Iceland, housed in a former dairy on Kaupvangsstræti in central Akureyri. Locals call the steep street Listagil, or Art Alley, and a rainy afternoon in town is the obvious time to go. The museum opened in 1993 inside the old KEA cooperative dairy, a white functionalist building from the street's industrial years. A 2018 renovation added a new exhibition hall, a new entrance and a walkway to Ketilhús next door, the old boiler house that now hosts exhibitions too. The program changes through the year, pairing Icelandic and international contemporary art with pieces from the museum's own collection. You'll find it in the town center, a short walk downhill from the steps of Akureyrarkirkja and within easy reach of the harbor where cruise ships dock. Akureyri is about five hours from Reykjavík by car on the Ring Road, or a short domestic flight. An hour covers the galleries comfortably, longer if a big show is on. The art museum in Akureyri is open every day, from 10 am to 5 pm in June through August and from noon to 5 pm the rest of the year. General admission is 2,400 ISK, with a reduced 1,200 ISK ticket for seniors and students. It closes on December 24, 25 and 31 and on January 1, so check the current exhibition program with the museum before you go.

Akureyri Botanical Garden

The Akureyri Botanical Garden, Lystigarðurinn in Icelandic, is a public garden of flowerbeds, lawns and tall trees on the hill above the town center in Akureyri, North Iceland. At 65.7°N, just below the Arctic Circle, it grows a range of plants that seems unlikely this far north. The land was set aside for a park in 1910, and the Akureyri Park Society, whose members were all women, opened it in 1912 as Iceland's first public park. It became a botanic garden in 1957 and is run by the town. Today it covers about 3.7 hectares and more than 6,400 hardy perennial species, with native Icelandic plants growing alongside species from mountain and arctic regions abroad. Summer is the time to come, when the Akureyri botanical garden is in full flower and a café in the grounds serves coffee and light meals. From June 1 to September 30, the gates and toilets are open from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. The gates also stay open from October to May, though the toilets close and the beds are mostly bare or under snow. The garden is on Eyrarlandsvegur, about a 15-minute walk uphill from the town center and close to the Akureyri swimming pool, so it fits easily into a cruise stop or a free afternoon. No admission fee is listed for walking in, and only some summer concerts held in the garden are ticketed. Allow an hour for a slow loop, longer if you stop for coffee.

Akureyri Museum

The Akureyri Museum (Minjasafnið á Akureyri) is the town history museum of Akureyri in North Iceland, on Aðalstræti in Innbærinn, the old town at the south end of Akureyri. It sits next door to Nonni's House and tells the story of North Iceland's largest town from inside its oldest neighborhood. The permanent exhibition, Akureyri: The Town by the Bay, traces the history of the town and the fjord through objects and photographs from daily life in Eyjafjörður. Temporary shows rotate through the other rooms. In 2026 they include Under Occupation, on the British, American, Norwegian and Canadian troops stationed in the fjord during World War II, and early maps of Iceland from the Schulte collection, among them the oldest known printed map of the country, from 1507. Outside, two smaller sights are worth a few minutes. The Akureyri Museum church is a small church built in 1846 across the fjord and later moved here, with a chandelier from 1688 and an altarpiece from 1806. The garden around it began in 1899 as Iceland's first tree nursery, and in 2000 it held the tallest birch tree measured in the country. One ticket covers the Akureyri Museum and six other museums the same organization runs, including Nonni's House, and it stays valid for a full year. It costs 2,800 ISK for adults and 2,200 ISK for those 67 and over, and visitors under 18 get in free. From June to September the museum is open daily from 11:00 to 17:00, and from October to May daily from 13:00 to 16:00. Plan on about an hour, or longer if you add Nonni's House. The museum is about 2 km south of the town center, an easy walk through the Akureyri old town, which makes it a good pick for cruise passengers with a few free hours in port.

Bjarnarhöfn Shark Museum

The Bjarnarhöfn Shark Museum is a family farm on the north coast of the Snæfellsnes Peninsula in West Iceland that still cures hákarl, Iceland's famous fermented shark, and opens the whole process to visitors. You'll probably smell the drying shed before you see it. The family has worked with Greenland shark for generations, and the farm opened its museum in 2001. Fresh Greenland shark meat is toxic, so it is fermented for weeks and then hung in an open shed for several months before anyone can eat it. These days the farm no longer hunts sharks itself and only processes sharks caught as bycatch. A visit includes a guided introduction to shark biology, the old fishing methods and the curing process, a look at the boats and gear in the museum, and a walk to the drying shed. At the end you get to taste the shark, which is the real test for most visitors. There is also a small 19th-century church on the farm. The museum sits between Stykkishólmur and Grundarfjörður, a short drive off Route 54 beside the Berserkjahraun lava field, and about two and a half hours from Reykjavík. It is open year-round, but hours and prices change, so check the official website or call ahead. Plan on 45 minutes to an hour, which fits easily into a day on Snæfellsnes.

East Iceland Heritage Museum

The East Iceland Heritage Museum (Minjasafn Austurlands) is a regional history museum in Egilsstaðir, housed in the Safnahúsið building at Laufskógar 1, a short walk from the town center and the swimming pool. It is the best place in town to learn how people in this corner of the country lived, and how the region's wild reindeer fit into that story. The museum has two permanent exhibitions. Reindeer in East Iceland, which opened in 2015, covers the animals' survival, the history of reindeer hunting, and how reindeer meat, hides and antlers have been used in food, crafts and design. East Iceland is the only part of the country where wild reindeer roam, so this exhibit puts the herds you may see along the road into context. The second exhibition, A Self-Sufficient Unit, shows how rural households in the region fed, clothed and housed themselves until the mid-20th century. Among the exhibits is a wooden baðstofa, the shared living and sleeping room of an old farmhouse, from the farm Brekka in Hróarstunga. Special exhibitions rotate through the year, and in 2026 the museum was showing Landnámskonan, built around the remains of two well-equipped Viking Age women found near Seyðisfjörður. In summer (June 1 to August 31), the museum is open Monday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. From September through May, hours drop to Tuesday to Friday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Adult admission was 1,800 ISK in 2026, visitors 17 and under get in free, and an audio guide costs 400 ISK. An hour is enough for most visitors. It makes a good stop on a gray day in Egilsstaðir, or on the way to Lagarfljót lake, which starts at the edge of town.

Gljúfrasteinn

Gljúfrasteinn is the former home of Halldór Laxness, Iceland's Nobel Prize-winning novelist, in Mosfellsdalur valley about 20 minutes from Reykjavík. Laxness and his wife, Auður, built the white house on the banks of the Kaldakvísl river in 1945, ten years before the Nobel came in 1955, and it is the closest you'll get to meeting him. Auður sold the house to the Icelandic state in 2002, and it opened as the Gljúfrasteinn museum in September 2004. Inside, the walls carry paintings by 20th-century Icelandic artists such as Jóhannes Kjarval and Nína Tryggvadóttir, along with work by the Danish painter Asger Jorn. An audio guide covers the ground floor, and in summer the living room hosts concerts. The house sits beside Route 36, the road to Þingvellir National Park, in the Mosfellsbær municipality. That makes the Laxness museum an easy first stop on a self-drive Golden Circle day. Plan on about an hour for the house, plus time for a walk along the river. From June through August, Gljúfrasteinn is open daily from 10:00 to 17:00. In spring and fall (March to May, September and October) it opens 10:00 to 16:00 Tuesday to Sunday, and from November to February only Tuesday to Friday. Admission is 1,500 ISK for adults and 1,200 ISK for seniors and students, while children get in free.

Herring Era Museum

The Herring Era Museum (Síldarminjasafn Íslands) in Siglufjörður tells the story of the herring boom that turned this small fjord town into one of the busiest ports in Iceland. Spread across three buildings on the harbor, it's the largest maritime and industrial museum in the country, and in 2004 it won the European Museum Forum's Micheletti Award as the best new industrial museum in Europe. Start in Róaldsbrakki, a Norwegian salting station built in 1907. The ground floor covers how herring was salted and barreled for export, while upstairs the rooms where the herring girls lived each summer are kept much as they were. Next door, Grána recreates a 1930s reduction plant that turned herring into meal and oil, using machinery salvaged from abandoned factories. The Boathouse, the newest of the three, rebuilds the harbor as it looked one evening in 1950, with full-size fishing boats moored at indoor piers. It gives the best sense of scale in the whole herring museum, so leave time for it rather than rushing through at the end. Siglufjörður sits at the northern tip of the Tröllaskagi peninsula, about an hour's drive from Akureyri through the Ólafsfjörður and Héðinsfjörður tunnels. The museum opens daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. in June, July and August, and from 1 to 5 p.m. in May and September, with visits by arrangement the rest of the year. Plan on about two hours, and check the current admission price with the museum before you go.

Húsavík Whale Museum

The Húsavík Whale Museum is a museum of whales and whaling in a former slaughterhouse on the harbor of Húsavík, North Iceland, and it displays 13 real whale skeletons. Seeing the animals laid out at full size, before or after a boat trip on Skjálfandi Bay, gives them a scale that's hard to judge from a deck. The centerpiece is the skeleton of a 25-meter female blue whale that washed ashore on Skagi in 2010. It lies on its back, the way whale carcasses usually come to rest on a beach, and belongs to the Natural History Institute of Iceland. Other rooms cover whale evolution and senses, strandings, the history of whaling and the marine life of the bay. The non-profit museum started in 1997 as a small trial exhibition and outgrew its first home within three years. Today the old slaughterhouse holds about 1,400 square meters of exhibition space, with a free audio guide and a gift shop by the entrance. From May to September, the Húsavík Whale Museum is open 9:00 to 18:00, and from October to April, 10:00 to 16:00. Adult tickets cost 2,650 ISK, and children aged 16 and under get in free with an adult. Plan on about an hour, longer if you read every panel. You'll find it at Hafnarstétt 1 by Húsavík harbor, a short walk from the whale-watching ticket offices and about an hour's drive from Akureyri. Because it's open all year, it also works as a backup plan when wind cancels a sailing.

Icelandic Aviation Museum

The Icelandic Aviation Museum (Flugsafn Íslands) is a museum of flight in a large hangar at Akureyri Airport in North Iceland, covering the story of flying in Iceland from the first flight in 1919 to the present day. Some of the aircraft parked inside are still airworthy, and a few take to the air at the museum's annual air show in June. The collection runs from light planes such as a Piper Cub and a Pitts Special up to the airliners that once linked Iceland's towns, including a Douglas DC-3 and a Douglas DC-6A. An Icelandair Boeing 727 is part of the display too, and you can step inside a few of the aircraft. Other exhibits cover air ambulance flights and the Icelandic Coast Guard, along with engines, airport vehicles and old logbooks. On a rainy day in Akureyri it's an easy pick, and aviation fans can spend a couple of hours in the hangar without noticing. From May 15 to September 15, the Akureyri aviation museum is open daily from 11:00 to 17:00. In winter it opens on Saturdays from 13:00 to 16:00 and by appointment. Admission is 1,800 ISK for adults and 1,200 ISK for seniors and students, and children under 18 get in free with an adult.

Keldur Turf Houses

The Keldur turf house is the oldest farmhouse still standing in Iceland, on the Rangárvellir plain in South Iceland, about 15 minutes north of Hvolsvöllur. You can walk through rooms people lived in for centuries, under grass roofs and behind black timber gables that face the yard. The farm has a long paper trail. Ingjaldur Höskuldsson, its first known resident, appears in Njáls saga, and the National Museum of Iceland traces the old farmhouse back to the late 12th century. Its timber frame and stone and turf walls follow the old passageway style, and the museum describes it as the last farmhouse of that kind left in the country. Look for the underground tunnel that runs from the house. It is thought to date from the 12th or 13th century, possibly dug as an escape route during a time of feuds, and it is one reason Keldur draws history buffs who skip the busier museums. Keldur is roughly an hour and a half from Reykjavík. From Route 1, take Route 264 (Rangárvallavegur) and follow the signs to the farm. Plan on 45 minutes to an hour, longer if you want to read every sign. The Keldur turf houses open only in summer, from June 1 to August 31, daily from 10:00 to 17:00. Admission is 2,500 ISK for adults and 1,600 ISK for students and seniors, while children under 18 get in free. Outside those dates the museum is closed, so time your visit for summer and pair it with Seljalandsfoss or a drive toward Hekla.

Laufás Turf Houses

The Laufás turf houses are a historic turf farmhouse and museum on the eastern shore of Eyjafjörður in North Iceland, about 30 km from Akureyri. From the road they look like a small village, a row of white wooden gables pressed into grass-covered walls, but behind the facade it's one farmhouse of narrow corridors and connected rooms where a priest's household of 20 to 30 people once lived. Laufás has been a church site and parsonage since the early days of Christianity in Iceland, and the National Museum records a church here as early as 1047. The farmhouse you see today was largely rebuilt in the second half of the 19th century under Reverend Björn Halldórsson, who held the parish from 1853 to 1882. Some of its timbers are thought to date from the 16th and 17th centuries. Inside, the Laufás museum is furnished the way a prosperous farm looked around 1900, with kitchens, bedrooms and the bridal room where brides got ready for their wedding. Look up at the gables for a carved eider drake, a nod to the eider nesting grounds that once earned the farm good money. The red-roofed church next door dates from 1865 and holds a carved pulpit from 1698. Laufás sits on Route 83 toward Grenivík, roughly half an hour's drive from Akureyri. An hour on site covers the farmhouse, the church and the visitor center in the old parsonage, which has a café and a local craft shop. The farm opens only in summer. In 2026 it ran daily from 11:00 to 17:00 between May 25 and September 17, and it reopens in June 2027, with prebooked groups welcome the rest of the year. A single 2,800 ISK ticket from the Akureyri Museum covers Laufás and its other museums for the whole year, and children under 18 get in free.

Laugavegur

Laugavegur is the main shopping street in downtown Reykjavík, running east from Bankastræti toward Hlemmur. Most first evenings in the city end up here, where visitors and locals cross paths over wool sweaters, cinnamon buns and a first round of craft beer. The name means "wash road." It once led out to the hot springs in Laugardalur, where the women of Reykjavík carried the town's laundry to wash it in the warm water. The old washing pools, Þvottalaugarnar, can still be seen in the valley today. Walk Laugavegur street from the downtown end and you'll pass Icelandic design and wool shops, outdoor clothing stores, bookshops and souvenir stores, with bakeries, cafés and restaurants in between. The lower stretch, from Klapparstígur to Frakkastígur, has been a permanent pedestrian street since 2020, so you can browse without dodging traffic. Hallgrímskirkja is a few minutes' walk uphill along Skólavörðustígur, which branches off where Laugavegur begins. Laugavegur works all year, and strolling it costs nothing. Daytime is best for shopping, since opening hours vary from store to store, and Reykjavík nightlife picks up after dark when the bars along the lower end fill, especially on Friday and Saturday. Give it an hour or two, longer if you stop to eat. One warning for trip planners: this shopping street has nothing to do with the Laugavegur hiking trail, the multi-day trek between Landmannalaugar and Þórsmörk in the highlands. If you're booking a guided trek, make sure you're looking at the trail.

LAVA Centre

The LAVA Centre is a volcano and earthquake exhibition at Austurvegur 14 in Hvolsvöllur, right on the Ring Road in South Iceland, about an hour and a half east of Reykjavík. It's the best indoor stop on the South Coast for understanding the landscape you're driving through, since Hekla, Katla and Eyjafjallajökull all sit within view of the building. Inside, interactive rooms walk you through how Iceland formed over millions of years, where its earthquake zones run and how the hot spot beneath the island feeds its volcanoes. You can touch different types of lava and tephra, follow live monitoring of active volcanic systems, and see the Fiery Heart of Iceland, a 12-meter installation. The geophysicist Ari Trausti Guðmundsson wrote the exhibition, and the center opened in 2017. A panoramic cinema shows a film about Iceland's most recent eruptions, and you can buy a cinema-only ticket if you're short on time. When the weather is clear, finish on the rooftop observation deck for a 360-degree view toward the volcanoes themselves. Seljalandsfoss is about 20 minutes farther east, which makes the exhibition an easy first stop on a South Coast day. The LAVA Centre is open every day of the year, and a rainy afternoon is when it earns its place on the itinerary. Tickets for the full experience cost 5,200 ISK per adult, while the film alone is 2,000 ISK and a family pack is 13,000 ISK (October 2026 prices). Opening hours are 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. from June through August and 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. the rest of the year. Allow at least an hour for the exhibition and film together.

Museum of Icelandic Sorcery & Witchcraft

The Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft is a small museum by the harbor in Hólmavík, on the Strandir coast of the Westfjords, about three hours' drive from Reykjavík. It tells the story of Iceland's 17th-century witch trials, when a carved symbol or a scrap of spellbook could get you burned at the stake. The trials were real. More than 200 sorcery cases came before Icelandic courts during the 1600s, and over 20 people were burned. Downstairs, the exhibits cover magic in folklore, including a replica of the notorious necropants, while the upper floor looks at who accused and judged the condemned. One corner recreates the home of Jón lærði, a self-taught scholar who only narrowly escaped the fire himself. The nonprofit Strandagaldur has run the museum since it opened in June 2000, and its staff still research and publish on Icelandic magic. The black wooden building stands by the harbor in the old part of Hólmavík, about a kilometer in from the main road. Plan on 45 minutes to an hour inside, or longer if you eat at Restaurant Galdur, which shares the building and is open to everyone. From May 15 to September 30 the museum opens daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The rest of the year it runs from noon to 6 p.m., closing on Mondays from November through March. Admission is 1,600 ISK for adults, with discounts for students and seniors, and free for kids 14 and under. The second half of the exhibition, Kotbýli kuklarans (the Sorcerer's Cottage), sits in Bjarnarfjörður about 25 kilometers north of Hólmavík, next to Hótel Laugarhóll. It recreates how an ordinary Strandir household lived in the witch-hunt era, and entry is free.

Petra's Stone Collection

Petra's Stone Collection is a house and garden full of rocks and minerals in Stöðvarfjörður, a small village on the Ring Road in the Eastfjords of East Iceland. Every stone was gathered by one woman, Petra Sveinsdóttir, who spent more than 60 years walking the mountain slopes around the fjords and carrying home what she found. Petra and her husband moved into the house, called Sunnuhlíð, in 1946 and planted trees around it. After he died in 1974, she opened her home and her stones to visitors, and the collection kept growing until it filled every room. Today the stones spill out into a garden of hardy Icelandic plants and imported species, including blue Himalayan poppies, with benches where you can sit for a while. What makes the stop worth it is the scale of one person's hobby, with stones in every room of the house and out across the garden. It's an easy break on a drive through the Eastfjords, and 45 minutes to an hour covers the house and garden at a relaxed pace. The museum sits at Fjarðarbraut 21, between Fáskrúðsfjörður and Breiðdalsvík, about an hour and 15 minutes by car from Egilsstaðir. Petra's Stone Collection opens daily from 9:00 to 17:00 between May 1 and October 15, and it's closed the rest of the year. Admission is 2,200 ISK for visitors 14 and older, while kids under 14 get in free. Kaffi Sunnó on site serves coffee from the village roastery along with soup and cake, which makes it a good place to stretch a short stop into lunch.

Settlement Center Borgarnes

The Borgarnes Settlement Center (Landnámssetur Íslands) is a museum in the town of Borgarnes, West Iceland, about an hour's drive north of Reykjavík. It tells how Iceland was settled, then follows Egill Skallagrímsson, one of the wildest characters in the sagas, through the district where his family made its home. On the drive to Snæfellsnes or the north, it is the easiest history stop you'll find. Two exhibitions fill the building, and each takes about 30 minutes with an audio guide offered in Icelandic and 14 other languages. The Settlement Exhibition covers how Norse sailors found their way across open ocean and who claimed land first, up to the founding of the Alþingi at Þingvellir in 930. One highlight is a rare model ship by Gunnar Marel Eggertsson, crewed by tiny clay figures from illustrator Brian Pilkington. Downstairs, the Egil's Saga exhibition winds through the old stone cellar of the warehouse like a dark maze. Egill was a poet and Viking raider whose father, Skalla-Grímur, settled this part of West Iceland. Wood carvings and reliefs by several Icelandic artists stage scenes from the saga, and the dim rooms tend to win over kids. The center occupies two of the oldest houses in Borgarnes, on Brákarbraut by the bridge to Brákarey island. The store building went up in 1877 to 1878, and businessman Thor Jensen ran the shop here as a young man before adding the warehouse next door. A newer building linking the two houses holds a gift shop, and the restaurant serves a soup and vegetarian lunch buffet from 11:30 to 15:00. The exhibitions are open daily from 10:00 to 21:00. A ticket for both costs 3,900 ISK for adults, 3,500 ISK for seniors, students and people with disabilities, and 1,500 ISK for children aged 6 to 12. Plan on an hour inside, or closer to two if you stay for lunch.

Skógar Museum

Skógar Museum (Skógasafn) is a folk, open-air and technical museum in the village of Skógar on Iceland's South Coast, a minute's drive from Skógafoss. It holds more than 15,000 objects from the farms and fishing families of the region, spread across three museums and a cluster of historic buildings. It's the best reason to linger in Skógar once you've seen the falls. The collection started with one man: Þórður Tómasson founded the museum in 1949 in the local school and kept collecting and curating until he retired in 2013, at the age of 92. In the folk museum, the centerpiece is Pétursey, an eight-oared fishing boat built in 1855. It was rowed off the harbor-less sand beaches here until 1946, which tells you a lot about how hard a living the South Coast offered. Save most of your time for the open-air museum outside. You can walk through a turf farmhouse with a communal sleeping room (baðstofa), an open-hearth kitchen and a cattle shed, then climb past a country schoolhouse, a church and a wooden house built in 1898. Every building was moved here from the surrounding districts and rebuilt on site. The Technical Museum, opened in 2002, covers transport and communication in Iceland, from working horses and river ferries to telephones and the work of rescue teams. Freya Café inside serves breakfast and lunch, and the museum shop shares the hall. The Skógar Museum is open daily from 9:00 to 18:00 from June to August and from 10:00 to 17:00 the rest of the year, closing only on December 24, 25 and January 1. Tickets cost 3,000 ISK for adults, 2,000 ISK for students and seniors and 1,600 ISK for teenagers aged 12 to 17, and children under 12 get in free. Skógar is about a two-hour drive east of Reykjavík on Route 1. Plan on 90 minutes to two hours at the museum, then walk over to the waterfall to round off the stop.

Technical Museum of East Iceland

The Technical Museum of East Iceland, known locally as Tækniminjasafn Austurlands, is a museum of technology on Hafnargata in Seyðisfjörður, East Iceland. It tells how electricity, machinery and the telegraph reached Iceland, in the town where the first submarine telegraph cable came ashore in 1906. The museum is also a place still rebuilding. On December 18, 2020, a large landslide hit the Búðareyri area of town and destroyed or badly damaged most of its historic buildings, and a good part of the collection was lost, although many objects were rescued. Since then the museum has worked without a permanent main building while it plans a new home in a safer part of town. Today's exhibition, Búðareyri: Stories of Transformation, fills the surviving part of the old machine shop and spills outside onto the foundations of houses lost in the Seyðisfjörður landslide. It mixes old and new technology, runs in Icelandic and English, and works well for kids. Outdoor displays near the ferry terminal can be seen at any hour. Seyðisfjörður is about 30 minutes from Egilsstaðir over the Fjarðarheiði pass on Route 93, and the Norröna ferry docks a short walk away. The exhibition opens Monday to Saturday from mid-May to mid-September and by appointment in winter. Admission is ISK 1,500 for adults, ISK 1,000 for students and seniors, and free for children 12 and under, and about an hour covers the indoor and outdoor displays.

Viking World Museum

The Viking World Museum, known in Icelandic as Víkingaheimar, is a museum on the shore of Njarðvík in Reykjanesbær, about 10 minutes from Keflavík Airport, built around a replica Viking ship that sailed from Iceland to New York. Being that close to the airport makes it an easy first or last stop of a trip. The ship is Íslendingur, a full-size replica of the Gokstad ship, a Viking vessel dug up in Norway in 1882. Shipbuilder and captain Gunnar Marel Eggertsson built it in 1996, and in 2000 he sailed it across the North Atlantic by way of Greenland and L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, reaching New York on October 5. At about 23 meters long, it fills the main hall. Two exhibitions round out the visit. Vikings of the North Atlantic first opened at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington in 2000 and covers how Norse people explored and settled from Scandinavia to North America. The Settlement of Iceland exhibition tells how the country itself was claimed. Viking World is open year-round, from 9:00 to 17:00 in summer and 10:00 to 16:00 in winter. Adult tickets cost 3,420 ISK, children under 12 get in free with an adult, and students and people with disabilities get a discount. Parking is free, and the building is wheelchair accessible with an elevator. Most people spend 60 to 90 minutes here, which fits a long layover or a slow arrival day in Iceland. From Reykjavík, the drive takes about 45 minutes along Route 41, and Strætó bus 55 from the airport stops a short walk away.

War and Peace Museum

The War and Peace Museum, called Hernámssetrið in Icelandic, is a World War II museum at Hlaðir on the north shore of Hvalfjörður in West Iceland, about 45 minutes' drive from Reykjavík through the Hvalfjörður tunnel. It tells how a quiet Icelandic fjord became a busy Allied naval base. British troops landed in Iceland on May 10, 1940, and American forces took over the following year. Hvalfjörður was deep and sheltered, so it became an anchorage for Allied warships, and convoys bound for the Soviet Union assembled here. For a few years, thousands of foreign servicemen far outnumbered the farmers who lived along the shore. The museum covers the occupation years from 1940 to 1945 with a large private collection. Rooms are set up with 1940s furniture, uniforms, photographs and everyday objects, so it feels more like walking through a set than reading display cases. Expect to spend about an hour, longer if you stop at the museum's café, The White Falcon. The War and Peace Museum is a summer-only stop. From May 1 to August 25, it's open Wednesday to Friday 13:00–17:00 and Saturday and Sunday 11:00–17:00, and it's closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. Outside that season, it opens only for groups that book ahead by phone. Adult tickets cost 2,500–2,600 ISK (the museum posts both figures), seniors and disabled visitors pay 2,200 ISK, and children under 11 get in free. The Hlaðir swimming pool is right next door. The museum also pairs well with a hike to Glymur waterfall at the head of the fjord, or with the slow scenic drive around Hvalfjörður instead of the tunnel.

Westfjords Heritage Museum

The Westfjords Heritage Museum (Byggðasafn Vestfjarða) is a local history museum in a 1784 timber warehouse at the edge of Ísafjörður's harbor, in the Westfjords of northwest Iceland. It stands in Neðstikaupstaður, the oldest cluster of houses in Iceland, where the Danish trade monopoly kept its stores and its merchant in the late 18th century. The building is half the reason to go. The exhibits sit in Turnhúsið, the tall log warehouse with the little tower on its roof. Its floors trace how Ísafjörður grew into a fishing town, from boats and trade in the early 1900s to the boom years of bigger catches between about 1950 and 1970, when the town's homes filled with the kitchen gear and toys you see on display. The top floor holds boat models and part of an accordion collection of more than 220 instruments, the oldest from around 1830. Next door, Krambúðin was built in 1757 as a shop and warehouse and now holds the museum's ticket desk and gift shop. Faktorshúsið, the merchant's house from 1765, is a private home, so you view it from outside. Tjöruhúsið, a warehouse from 1781, now houses one of the best-known restaurants in the Westfjords. Ísafjörður is the main town of the Westfjords, about 416 km from Reykjavík, or roughly six hours by car. Neðstikaupstaður is a short walk from the town center and the cruise pier, and 45 minutes to an hour covers the museum and the houses around it. The museum opens daily from May 16 to September 30. In 2026 the hours were 9:00 to 17:00 until August 31, then 9:00 to 15:00 until September 15 and 11:00 to 15:00 for the rest of the month, and it opens by arrangement in winter. Admission in 2026 is 1,750 ISK for adults and 1,300 ISK for seniors, disabled visitors and students, with children free.

Þjóðveldisbærinn Commonwealth Farm

Þjóðveldisbærinn, the Commonwealth Farm, is a full-size reconstruction of a chieftain's farm from Iceland's Commonwealth era, standing in Þjórsárdalur valley in South Iceland. Its turf walls, stone footings and carved timber gables give a clear sense of how a wealthy household lived around the year 1100. The model is Stöng, a real farm about 7 kilometers up Þjórsárdalur that was buried under tephra when Hekla erupted in 1104. Builders followed the excavated ruins as closely as possible, under the direction of medieval architecture expert Hörður Ágústsson. Work began in 1974 for the 1100th anniversary of Iceland's settlement and finished in 1977. Beside the farm stands a small church, modeled on early Icelandic churches including one excavated at Stöng. It was consecrated in 2000 to mark 1,000 years of Christianity in Iceland. The Saga Age farm is open daily from May 1 to October 15, 10:00 to 17:30. Admission is 2,500 ISK for adults and 500 ISK for children aged 6 to 12, and under-6s get in free. Plan on 30 to 45 minutes. You'll find Þjóðveldisbærinn off Route 32 in Þjórsárdalur, near the Búrfell hydropower station and a few minutes from Hjálparfoss. From Reykjavík the drive takes about 1 hour 45 minutes. To see the original, continue on the gravel Road 327 to the Stöng ruins, a short walk from the Gjáin valley.