3 Days in Akureyri

Akureyrarkirkja stands on a hill above the center, and you climb a long stair to reach it. State architect Guðjón Samúelsson drew it and it was completed in 1940. The organ has about 3,200 pipes, which is a lot for a town this size.

Look at the stained glass. The middle window was long said to come from a church in Coventry destroyed in the war, a story still in older guidebooks, but it was only ever believed, and most of the other windows were made in Exeter. Go early, before the cruise-ship groups, and look back at the town and the fjord from the top step.

Five minutes downhill is the botanical garden. It began when local women, who had founded a park association, were given a hectare of land in 1909, and it became the first public park in Iceland. Today it holds about 400 native species and thousands of foreign ones, 85 km from the Arctic Circle.

Entry is free all year. In winter there are no facilities, which suits a morning walk among bare beds, snow and the fjord below. In summer a café inside serves coffee and light meals.

Walk down to the harbor and Hof, the cultural center on Strandgata: home of the North Iceland Symphony Orchestra and the Akureyri theater company, and the town's tourist information office.

Then find the traffic lights. Akureyri's red lights are hearts, a thing that began in summer 2008 at a family festival. When the financial crisis hit that autumn, the Smile with Your Heart campaign kept them. A selfie light stands near Hof with the church behind it, and a heart sculpture marks the south end of the pedestrian street.

Lunch on the main street is a hot dog from Pylsuvagninn on Hafnarstræti. Say eina með öllu, one with everything: raw and fried onions, ketchup, sweet mustard and remoulade. For a sit-down meal, Bautinn on the corner of Hafnarstræti and Kaupvangsstræti, is the old standby for fish, and Kaffi Ilmur nearby does brunch and lunch until 16:00.

Walk south along Aðalstræti into Innbærinn, the oldest part of town, on the strip of land between the hill and the fjord. The old wooden houses are a quiet contrast to the glass of Hof.

Between October and May the Akureyri Museum and Nonnahús, the childhood home of the writer Jón Sveinsson (known as Nonni), are open daily from 13:00 to 16:00, and one ticket covers three museums for 2,000 ISK. Start with the museum, which tells the local story, and finish in Nonnahús, a small house you can see in half an hour.

Brynja, at Aðalstræti 3, has been the town's ice cream shop for generations, and it's the thing locals will ask whether you tried. The soft vanilla base is made with milk and cream, the cones come dipped in chocolate, and a self-serve bar of candies and cookies sits beside the counter. Have it in January with snow outside; Icelanders do.

It sits on the way back to the center, between the museum and the pool.

Finish in the town pool, which is where Akureyri socializes. Two 25-meter outdoor pools, three water slides, four hot tubs, a steam bath and a cold tub, all geothermally heated: 27 to 33 degrees in the pools, 37 to 42 in the hot tubs. At about 1,400 ISK it costs less than a fifth of what the Forest Lagoon charges.

That lagoon is the splurge alternative, a five-minute drive away in Vaðlaskógur, with two 37-degree pools above the fjord, a Finnish dry sauna and a cold pool. Adult entry starts at 7,490 ISK, towels extra, and it's open late. Book ahead.

Goðafoss, the waterfall of the gods, is 34 km east of Akureyri on the Ring Road: the Skjálfandafljót river dropping about 12 meters across a 30-meter curve. It's not Iceland's biggest waterfall, but it's the one with the story. According to the legend, around the year 1000 the chieftain Þorgeir decided that Iceland would adopt Christianity, then threw the images of the old gods into the water.

Both banks have paths. In winter the spray freezes and the walkways glaze over, so wear grips and keep back from the edge.

Dimmuborgir means dark cities or dark forts, and the name fits: a field of collapsed lava caves and standing pillars east of the lake, with paths between them like the streets of a ruined citadel.

Marked trails run from loops of about 45 minutes to a longer circuit, and the Kirkjuhringur trail passes the Church formation. The caves are tied in local folklore to the Yule Lads, the Icelandic Christmas trolls, which is why December is said to be the best time to look for them.

Hverfjall is a tephra ring that erupted about 2,500 years ago and left a crater roughly a kilometer across. Only two paths lead to the rim, from the northwest and the south, and any other route up or down is forbidden to protect the slopes from erosion.

The reward is the view across the lake and the lava fields. In snow and ice the climb is steep, and wind on the rim can be fierce.

Vogafjós is a working dairy farm on the lake's east shore with a restaurant in the cowshed. The kitchen uses farm products: smoked trout, home-made cheese, smoked lamb and hverabrauð, rye bread baked in the geothermal ground.

It's the right lunch for this day, a warm room between the crater and the steam field. The site lists the restaurant as open daily from 12:00 to 21:00, kitchen until 20:00.

East of the lake, under Námaskarð pass, Hverir is a geothermal field of boiling mud pots and hissing fumaroles, yellow with sulfur and smelling like it. It steams most dramatically in the cold.

On the way, stop at Grjótagjá, a small lava cave with a thermal spring inside. It was a bathing spot until the 1970s, but during the Krafla eruptions of 1975 to 1984 the water became far too hot, and visitors are now warned that the roof is unstable. Look in, take your photograph, and do not swim. The area's visitor site, visitmyvatn.is, has current winter notes.

The Mývatn Nature Baths have been renamed Earth Lagoon Mývatn: a lagoon at Jarðbaðshólar next to the Ring Road, with alkaline water at 36 to 40 degrees, a steam bath and a swim-up bar. The building was rebuilt and reopened in 2026, so older descriptions elsewhere may not match.

It's the best way to end a cold day, and on a clear dark night you can watch for aurora from the water. Tickets start at 7,900 ISK, towels and swimsuits are rented separately, and the posted hours are 12:00 to 22:00, though the operator says they may vary by season.

Start at the Whale Museum on the harbor, a good introduction before you go out. Húsavík is a town of about 2,500 people, and the bay has had humpbacks, minkes, blue whales, white-beaked dolphins and, rarely, orcas, all of which the museum explains.

Húsavík calls itself the whale-watching capital of Iceland, and the two main operators are Gentle Giants and North Sailing. Gentle Giants' main tour, GG1, takes about three hours on an oak boat and costs 12,490 ISK in 2026. The company claims whales on 97 to 99 percent of recent trips, a figure that mostly reflects summer.

Late autumn is quieter but still good: North Sailing reports daily humpback sightings in October and November from both Húsavík and Árskógssandur. Warm overalls are provided, but the wind on the water is much colder than on land. Book ahead and expect cancellations in rough seas.

Gamli Baukur, at Hafnarstétt 9 overlooking the harbor, is the obvious place for a warm lunch after the cold, with a bar upstairs that gets lively on weekends. Menus and opening hours change by season, so call ahead. If it's closed, other harbor restaurants and cafés will do the same job.

The wooden church above the harbor was built in 1907 by the architect Rögnvaldur Ólafsson and is the best-known landmark of the town. Walk up for the view over the bay, then back down to the water. If the door is open, go in.

North of the harbor, GeoSea has pools of warm geothermal seawater at 38 to 39 degrees looking out over Skjálfandi Bay. It's the best way to finish the day.

The site lists 12:00 to 22:00 daily, but a January post gave 17:00 to 22:00 on Monday to Thursday, so in winter check before you plan around it. The drive back to Akureyri takes about 70 minutes.