Trekking in Laugavegur & Fimmvörðuháls

The Laugavegur is Iceland's most famous trek, and with reason: in a handful of days it crosses more kinds of landscape than most whole countries contain. It begins in the rhyolite hills of Landmannalaugar — orange, green and sulphurous, with hot springs to soak in — then works across black-sand desert, snowfields and braided glacial rivers to the birch woods of Þórsmörk.

Add the Fimmvörðuháls extension and you finish by walking over the pass between two ice caps, past craters that were still steaming a decade after the 2010 eruption. Around eighty kilometres in all, with rivers you wade and weather that can turn in an hour.

The huts are booked through Ferðafélag Íslands and sell out months ahead, and the season is genuinely short — roughly late June to early September. Come prepared for cold and wet even in midsummer; the Icelandic interior makes its own weather, and it rarely makes it kind.

Huts are booked through Ferðafélag Íslands and sell out months ahead. The season is genuinely short — roughly late June to early September.