Walking Adventures in Iceland:
Land of Fire and Ice

If one puts a mental picture to the name Iceland, one immediately associates it with ice. However, Iceland, the “land of fire and ice,” is renowned for its active volcanoes, huge glaciers and fiords, and midnight sun but it is also a land of fertile green valleys, sparkling rivers, stunning waterfalls, exquisite harbours, delicious seafood and farms and towns located in some of the most dramatic and romantic settings you are ever likely to see. Because of the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, it has a surprisingly mild climate, which is amazing when you realize that it lies just south of the Arctic Circle and has the glacier of Vatnajokull, which contains more ice than all other glaciers in Europe combined. Add to this the many thermal pools and spas which are a result of underground volcanic activity and you can see why people who come here are amazed that this part of the world, this small Nordic country, is so magnificent and yet so unknown to the average traveler.

Our flight on Iceland’s national airline, Icelandair, will take less than five hours from Baltimore. Join us as we begin our tour from Reykjavik, its capital city, rich in cultural attractions and with a vibrant nightlife. Iceland was the last of the European countries to be settled, first by monks from Ireland and later by the Vikings from Norway at the end of the ninth century. Stories about this part of their history, called “sagas,” were handed down verbally from generation to generation before being written down on calfskin manuscripts in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Among those sagas is how Leif Ericsson, one of Iceland’s early settlers, discovered land west of Iceland. This was America, 500 years before Christopher Columbus set foot upon it.

We will make our own discovery of this fantastic land with Andy Dennis, a Ph.D. in Old Icelandic Law from Cambridge who lived in Iceland for five years, and is now a full time wilderness advocate and guide in New Zealand. We will traverse this country clockwise from the north to the east and the south where good roads and excellent hiking trails take us to some of the country’s most extraordinary landscapes. From volcanoes to glaciers, Iceland is home to more of nature’s wonders, hot and cold, than any other place on earth.

Our hikes will take us through lush valleys and across wild heathlands, over mountains and through an amazing variety of volcanic and geothermal scenery on trails that are a paradise to botanist and bird-watchers. We will have a chance to go whale watching and there is an optional boat ride among icebergs. For the golfers in the group, there will be a chance for you to play a round on the brink of the Arctic Circle! We will hike through the Icelandic equivalent of the Grand Canyon and on to the sight of the most powerful waterfall in Europe – Godafoss, where 53,000 gallons a second of murky glacier river plunge over a 140 foot drop. We will hike up a river with beautiful waterfalls towards the saddle between two ice caps and up to a volcanic crater. Most days we will relax after our adventures with a soak in the soothing waters of the naturally heated pools and spas.