ICELAND: LAND OF ICE, FIRE & VIKINGS! (Travel Documentary)

Iceland. They call it the land of ice and fire. Stunning and unpredictable. A place where I feel nostalgic even as I'm still there, because I know I'll never be able to experience the full extent of its beauty. Look at this! And this is why we came to Iceland. And then there are the 400,000 people who call this place home, who live through endless days of sunshine in the summer and stretches of near total darkness in the winter, along with weather that changes in a heartbeat. Yeah, we come from Vikings probably. Yeah, the hidden people took them. Join us for a road trip of a lifetime. We'll start in Reykjavik, venture into the rugged volcanic highlands, then drive the iconic ring road that circles the island. We're chasing a beauty here that's too vast for a single lifetime. Our road trip, like most, starts with a stop in Reykjavik, Iceland's capital and the northern most capital of a sovereign state in the world, sitting at about 64 degrees north. Hello from Reykjavik. We are currently in downtown and usually on a trip to Iceland, you don't spend that much time in the city. You come here for a couple days, walk around and prep for the trip ahead. But we're going to explore a little bit more than that. Right now we're on the main commerce street and you have some restaurants and bars and shopping around. And it's pretty lively at the moment, lots of people out and about. But in general, the city has a very calm and laid back vibe. The entire population of Iceland is under 400,000, so you can kind of feel that. But I like it. I think it's quite charming. And now's a very unique time of year to be here because it is summer. It is smack down in the middle of June and at this time the sun quite literally never sets. There's about three hours between midnight and 3 a.m. that the locals call night, but it is still bright. This is the famous Rainbow Street and behind me the famous Brutalist Church that is the centerpiece of Reykjavik. Hallgrímskirkja is Reykjavik's tallest building, visible from almost everywhere in the city. Its design was inspired by Iceland's natural landscape, its façade mimicking hexagonal basalt columns, glaciers, and lava flows. This guy's the man. He's so friendly. We were literally just coming out of the grocery store Okay, so what is your name? Sigurðjón. Sigurðjón. I'm Dottie. Dottie. And is it true you won the best beard in all of Iceland? I did. The most beautiful beard in Iceland. It is pretty magnificent, I must say. It's pretty good. And right now, are you sleeping during the midnight sun period? In the winter you sleep, but in the summer you just work as hell because the sun doesn't go down. Is there anything else you think people should know about Icelandic culture in general? Yeah, we come from Vikings probably. We love the cold. I love the cold. My favorite day of the year is when it gets cold and people can't drive around because there's too much snow. Look at my face. Look at my hair. Do I look like I go to Spain every year? But I think this is the most beautiful place in the world. You know, people are friendly, people love each other, and they take care of each other. So what do people here do for fun? Get drunk. Yeah. We drink a lot. We party a lot. We dance a lot. And we try to, you know, gather with the community, gather with the friends, gather with the family. Oh yeah, dog. Thank you, man. Thank you. We just met a real-life Viking. We have come to the spot to be in town apparently. A local told us that this is the best hot dog in all of Iceland. So let's see what all the fuss is about. This place is a big deal, a fixture in Iceland since 1937. The Kardashians have eaten here, along with Metallica and Charlie Sheen. There's even a Bill Clinton special. He likes his hot dog with only mustard. Okay, let's try the best hot dog in Europe, allegedly. You got like a sweet mustard, tomato sauce, and then crispy French onion bits. Simple and yummy. It's incredible. It's really good. We are at the Camp Easy office right now picking up our camper van which will be our home for the next 11 days. They send a shuttle to the airport to pick you up and bring you right to the office where you're greeted by very friendly staff and the check-in process is very simple and straightforward. You sign your paperwork, watch a few instructional videos, and learn about the van. You get a tour, pick up any extras you need, and that's it. We got our keys and I'm very excited to get started. And there's our baby over there. That's going to be our home for the next 11 days. Off we go. A three hours drive from Reykjavik and we arrive in Landmanalaur in the Icelandic highlands, a vast interior plateau that covers nearly half of the country. Largely uninhabited and unreachable most of the year. In the summer you can visit with a sturdy 4x4. Good morning. It is early. We just woke up and we are going to attempt a river crossing to get to the nearest campground. All right, take a look at what we're dealing with here. Can we do it? We got to make it across. All right, that was pretty easy. Our first mission here is a quick but intense hike up Mount Blanugar, an inactive rhyolite volcano. The thing to do here is to hike. There's a couple trails that we're going to experiment with and now we are headed to a volcano. It's very beautiful already. And this is why we came to Iceland, for views like these that make you feel like you're literally on another planet. Last final killer switchback before the summit, but we've made it. And holy wow, it is beautiful. That's the volcano over there. You can see where the lava started spilling down and then it leads into the gigantic lava field over there that's next to the camp. And you can still see little bits of smoke coming out of it as well. It's pretty cool. Oh! Landmannalaugar is shaped by a complex system of volcanic and geothermal activity. Rainbow, snow-covered mountains, and black lava fields define the landscape. And then there are the natural hot springs warmed by the magma simmering below ground. How cool is it that we're just in a natural hot spring right now? And it's cool because the water here is cool. The boiling water is coming from there, so you get streams of cool water and hot water. And we have it pretty much all to ourselves. How are you doing, babe? Doing great. I'm sick, but this water is very amazing, so I'm feeling great. Yeah, not a bad start to the trip. And just being out in the wilderness is amazing. Yes. So this is what we wanted to unplug a little bit. The hot pool podcast in Iceland. Yeah, hot pool podcast. So what's your name? My name is Atnar. Atnar. You were telling us about the name of this place. Yeah. Landmannalaugar. And what does it mean? Land is country, manna is man, and then laugar is pool. Okay, so it's really descriptive. Yeah, basically, you're going to have to be stupid if you don't know what we're talking about. So Þingvellir is like the national park that is like one of the part of the Golden Circle. And Þing means parliament, and vellir means fields. And this is where we used to have the parliament here. So it's like, where do you have the parliament? At the parliament fields. Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thank you. And there's a rumor that Icelandic people believe in elves. Do you believe in elves? I mean, what is it not to believe? So we call the hidden people. It's not really like, like elves, like hidden people are supposed to be like, human-like, very beautiful, living in the other realms. So my theory is like, imagine living here and there's no electricity. There's no heating. You just have hot pools. That's like how the old, like in the old days, they would live. And then you have very harsh winters, like crazy winters. So they were maybe like traveling on horses or walking over the highlands to get to another town. And then a lot of people died, you know, in those journeys. And then what are you going to tell your kids? Yeah, the hidden people took him, your father. Yeah, that makes sense. What do you think are the characteristics that define Icelandic people, kind of generally speaking? Pretty much honest, quite rough, like either, you know, depressed or very manic, you know, like the weather. They're private, but they're like still like open if you talk to them. We've come to Skógafoss, which is a very famous and beautiful waterfall. It is also quite popular, as you can see. It is absolutely swarming with tourists. But there is a surprise if you climb up and behind the waterfall, there is one of the most beautiful hiking trails in the world. We did it when we came to Iceland in 2018, and I've been thinking about it since. So today I'm going to rediscover if it is as amazing as I remember. Another minute's walk and another magnificent waterfall. This is probably what Iceland is best known for. Places like this are why Iceland is such an amazing outdoor destination. This is incredibly accessible to pretty much everyone, but also for the more adventurous. This trail actually goes 15 miles into a valley called Thor's Valley, which is very remote and isolated and rugged. So you can kind of choose your own adventure. I'm experiencing a bit of what I think they call travel disappointment. So we visited Skógafoss in 2018, so around six years ago, and it was off-season and it was very pristine. As soon as we got on this hiking trail behind the waterfall, we were all by ourselves. This time around, we're here in peak summer season and it seems like a lot of infrastructure has been built up around the waterfall to support tourism. So there's kind of a grungy campsite, you know, lots of hotels and restaurants. This in no way takes away from the natural beauty of Iceland. It just, you know, is what it is. Tourism is exploding across the world and this is the reality everywhere. Okay, that was cool. Let's go to the next destination. 30 minutes away, next to the small town of Vik, is Derholeyi lighthouse, where you get sweeping views of Iceland's southern coastline. Black sand stretching for miles and dramatic rock formations rising like ancient ruins from the Atlantic. The southern region of Iceland is really amazing. It's not hard to see why it's the most famous spot for tourists. Here you have the famous black sand beach with the rock formations and the dramatic cliffs in the background and all this is just a few hours away from Reykjavik, the capital, so it's very accessible. Look, that rock formation looks like an elephant in the middle of the ocean. Drive around Iceland and you're going to see horses, gorgeous ones, roaming freely across the landscape that feels almost otherworldly. Brought here by Viking settlers over a thousand years ago, they've been bred in complete isolation and are now a proud fixture across the country. Icelandic horses are just stunning. They're all different colors and they have these long luscious manes that are somehow different colors than their bodies and they look like they're just modeling all the time. They're on these picturesque landscapes and to top it off, they're very sweet, so they're known for being really friendly. And the horses here are special because they control the imports really strongly, so they will not allow other horses to come into the country and if an Icelandic horse has been exported to another country, it can't come back in, so the genetics of this specific horse is, you know, very protected by the country. You want some tall grass? You want some tall? Yes, yeah, you eat it, yes. They really love grooming each other. Hello from Iceland. We originally had a jam-packed few days planned, but life doesn't always go as expected and Lenza came down with quite a bad flu and we ended up spending most of our time at this campsite, so I figured now would be the perfect chance to show you around. So come on inside to our humble abode. This is a Volkswagen Crafter 4x4 easy luxury van. So this is a wraparound couch. I love hanging out here, putting my feet up, reading a book. You can see beautiful views out the window and then at night this turns into a bed very easily. All you have to do is pull out the couch like this, pull this down, and look how wide it is. I'm 62 feet tall, 240 pounds, and look how much more space Dottie has for herself. We've slept like babies the entire time, which is great for recovering from a bug. This is a beautiful and very easy to set up table for the van. It takes about 10 seconds to set up. Very, very good, very sturdy. You can have your beautiful meals here. You can do some work over here. And then when you're done, you just disassemble it and then boom, it is spacious again. Next, we have the kitchen area and very generous counter space for cooking. This opens up right here. Gas stove. It's amazing to cook meals. It cooks really fast. We can do our dishes here. And then Camp Easy provides everything you need to cook good meals. So there's bowls, plates, mugs, pots, pans. You have not one, but two refrigerators. Over here, you have another chill out area or bed. So if you have a third person, they could sleep very comfortably over here. And there's a TV in this van. You can watch YouTube and any of your favorite streaming platforms. It is a smart TV. And that's because the van is fully equipped with Wi-Fi. Those are kind of all the big features in the van, but there's a lot of little thoughtful details as well. I personally love how much storage there is. A mirror so we can make sure our looks haven't deteriorated in the weeks on the road. Here are all the light switches. So at night, it's very bright and there's easy heating as well. Iceland's weather is notoriously unpredictable. So in the evening, if it gets cold, you just pop this on and it's toasty and amazing. After long days of hiking and exploring the great outdoors, it's just so nice to have a cozy space to come back to. So if you're coming to Iceland, definitely check out Camp Easy. I cannot recommend them enough. Iceland is literally the land of ice and fire. Fire simmers below ground, capable of rewriting the landscape overnight. Ice sprawls above, shaping the island in slow, patient waves. Vatnajökull, our next destination, is a glacier that covers 8% of the country. A massive moving body of ice, thick enough to hide entire volcanoes underneath. The famous Jökulsárlón is here, where icebergs drift out to the sea. And at the southern edge of Vatnajökull, you'll find Fjallsárlón. It's quiet here, with a more intimate feeling, but it is no less dramatically beautiful. So we're going on a casual kayak on a glacial lagoon today and we are suiting up. We got these snazzy dry suits. It's actually quite toasty today, so I think it's going to be less frigid than I imagined. Okay. You guys not okay? Doing great, doing really good. The thing about Iceland, just otherworldly landscapes everywhere you look. All right, off we go. That over there is apparently the tallest volcano in Iceland, so a lot of ice gathers up there. And then over the course of 300 years, it makes its way down and it becomes this glacier over here. We're learning a lot of fun facts about glaciers today, and icebergs as well. So the icebergs you see around me, you may see one foot of them above the water, and then below it's like nine feet. So that's where the saying the tip of the iceberg comes from. Fresh, crisp. And you see these bubbles in here? That's 300-year-old air trapped in the ice. How cool is that? And yeah, I guess it would be nice with some whiskey. Take a closer look at the ice and you'll notice it's not all the same. Some pieces are perfectly clear, like glass, with almost no air inside. Then there are the large powdery blue pieces, the most common here, with soft milky tones created by scattered light and tiny trapped air bubbles. The ice on glacial lakes moves constantly, and with Iceland's shifting weather, it feels like a different world every 10 minutes. That moodiness and the fleeting nature of it all is what makes this place so special. I am Rowan, and I am the owner of Glacier and Volcano Expeditions, and we do glacier kayaking and glacier hikes here on Fjällsjökull, that's the name of this glacier, and Fjällsaland. So if you want to go glacier hiking or glacier kayaking, hit me up. Glacier and Volcano Expeditions. Good morning. I slept well last night in this bed. Too well, actually. I almost don't want to get up, but let's go explore. I gotta say, the campsites in Iceland, for how beautiful the country is, leave a lot to be desired. So I am eternally grateful for a van, which provides us with a cozy place to chill, and this is it this morning. It is beautiful here. Yeah, Iceland continues to deliver. Vestrahorn is located on the Stocknes Peninsula in southeastern Iceland, next to striking black sand beaches. Fast-moving clouds, shifting light, and sudden bursts of fog create a dramatic atmosphere. It's no surprise that this is one of the most photographed mountains in the And we met some people from Vanlife Iceland. It's an Instagram page. I believe they do group tours together, and it's run by this big Icelandic influencer, and it's quite cool. I like seeing them take photos and getting some inspiration from them. You do a little heel tap here? And then the spin is good, like this. Exactly. And then you do like a little, yeah. All right, we just got a frolicking lesson from Eli the man. He is the frolicking sensei. Well, it was so much fun meeting fellow content creators, especially in a place as beautiful as this. The crew from Vanlife Iceland, they were so welcoming. They invited us to their photo shoots. We learned how to frolic together, and as a content creator, it's just always nice to meet other people doing the same thing, because when you're doing this alone, it can feel a little isolating, and you feel a little shy sometimes talking to the camera or posing in front of the camera in front of a bunch of other people. But when you meet other people doing the same thing, it makes it feel much more normal and much more fun. So that was just a really cool experience for me. We're headed on a hike to the third largest waterfall in Iceland, and we're trying to hype ourselves up a little bit, to be honest. It's about two hours back and forth, and we're both tired. Eight days into the road trip, and we've done a lot already, but let's go. It looks really cool. You can kind of see it peeking out over there already. Rocks like this, where you have the vertical column shape, this is fairly common in Iceland, and it's really interesting why. So these are basalt rock, and basalt is a specific type of lava. As we know, Iceland is a very volcanic landscape, and then when the lava cools, it contracts, and then it cracks. And so when it cracks vertically, that's what gives it this column shape. There are over 10,000 waterfalls here in Iceland, and you can really feel that when you're driving around the country. Sometimes you'll pass by a mountain, and it's just waterfall after waterfall after waterfall after waterfall. But this one behind me, Hengifoss, is really special because of its size. So it's the third or fourth largest waterfall in Iceland, but also because of the cliff behind it. So you can see there's kind of layers in the cliff. So there's a layer of basalt rock, which is like the darkish gray color, and then a layer of red clay. So it looks very unique and striking, and this was formed over millions and millions of years of geologic activity. We made it to the top after quite a scramble. It was a huge climb to get up here, but oh my gosh, was it absolutely worth it. Look at this! It is just so amazing, and from here you can really see the layers of the basalt rock and the red clay. It is just so striking, and we have it completely to ourselves. Heading away from the tourist-heavy south, we travel up the east coast through remote and wild fjords, driving along winding coastal roads flanked by steep mountains that drop straight into the sea. Getting to our next destination means winding over a narrow mountain pass and down into a tiny village, a place quietly shared with some very special residents. We're here seeing puffins, a whole lot of them. So puffins come to Iceland from April to August, and they spend the summer here, and then in the winter they go and spend their time on the ocean, and they're very cute. They're smaller than I imagined. They're kind of like the size of a pigeon, and they have these really distinctive bright orange webbed feet and orange beaks with really interesting patterns. I think they kind of look like jigsaw from Saw. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. Lenza doesn't agree that they look like jigsaw, so let us know what you think. It's quite cool because you can see their little nests, so they all hang out by where they live, but then sometimes they'll dive in, they'll get a little grass. I assume it's to make their nest inside the hole, and they poop really funny. They basically shoot out a bunch of poop all at once, and they eat like little fish, crustaceans, and you'll see the food in their mouth sometimes. They'll fly away, dive into the ocean, and come back, and you can see the food in their mouths. Here are some fun facts about puffins. Their beaks, the bright orange beaks, are actually fluorescent, and nobody knows why, but they guess that it has something to do with mating. Puffins are extremely strong swimmers and divers. They can dive down to 60 meters deep, and they can hold up to 10 fish in their beaks at a time. Also, puffins are monogamous, so they will go to their same partner's nest each year. Also, the oldest known puffin is 41 years old. We're in a little town in the north of Iceland called Husavik, and they're very famous for whale sightings, so we're about to go on a whale watching tour with North Saline, and it's kind of interesting because the towns up here kind of remind me of little towns in New England, so it's giving me a little bit East Coast United States vibes. Okay, suited up and ready to go. This cold does not have a chance with me right now. Got my Icelandic wool hat, got my one piece. We spotted our first whale. It was a humpback, and it came up, and they dive for five to ten minutes in this bay, so once they go down, you have to wait a little bit, but that's actually not too long of a wait time, so that was cool. Our first spotting. We're getting front row seats right now, and there are mainly humpbacks that we're seeing, and they can get up to, I think, 18 meters, which is a little bit bigger than this boat, and they weigh more than eight African elephants. I can't even really visualize how big that is, but they're massive. So these are kind of like the whale's teeth. Not exactly, but there's four here. They have many, many, many of these, and they eat very, very small food, so they eat for hours, and then it goes through here, and then basically what they don't eat filters out, so it's like a very efficient filtration system. It's really interesting. The texture right now, it's probably a bit more rigid than it would be on a live whale, but it kind of has a texture of like palm tree bark or something similar. So you are the captain. Yeah. What is your name? Birkir. How long have you been the captain of this ship, or any ship? This is my second season in north sailing, but I own my own company before, and that I have for 20 years. I've been a captain for a long time. Okay, so you've been on the sea like your whole life, basically, then. Do you come from a family of sailors? My father was a sailor, and my grandfather, and my mom was also at sea. There's a rumor that Icelandic people believe in elves. Do you believe in elves? Yeah, they say it's like 80 percent of the Icelandic people believe in elves. That's a lie. It is 100 percent. Okay, so you do, for sure then. We have stories like from old days, when they were making roads, the elves, when this big machine was coming to their home, then they go over the night and break the machine, so they couldn't do the work the day after. Oh, interesting. So the elves kind of protect the environments, or so the myth goes, then? You can say that. So now is the midnight sun, so the sun never really sets, right? The longest day in Iceland is 21st of June, and the short one is 21st of December, and then we have light for three hours. So really, really extreme. How do you think that shapes your mindset, or you know, the mindset of people here in general? Take pills. Wintertime can be tough, and many people, they really go down emotionally, but also we have look forward to the summer, and everything over 10 degrees is good. So I feel like here to survive, you have to be kind of rugged and tough, both physically and mentally, then it sounds like. When we go to another country, like Norway or Sweden, and they hear we're from Iceland, they want to have us, because we are used to have hard work, and we know how to work. It's about 10 30 p.m., and as you can see, it is still completely bright outside, and yesterday was the summer solstice, which means that it was the longest day of the year. So today, the day is still very long. The sun will set after midnight and rise again at 2 45 a.m., and it's just such a beautiful time. The light is beautiful. It looks like golden hour, and in the summer, all the wildflowers are out, so you can see I'm surrounded by lupins, and with the sun being out all the time, it has been very interesting. At first, it took a little getting used to, because when the sun's up, you're awake and alert, and it feels like you could stay up all night, and you have to force yourself to go to sleep, but after a while, you kind of get used to that, and you just start to enjoy the endless days. We're reaching the end of our time here in Iceland, unfortunately, but I know it's a place we're going to come back to over and over again, and that's because when I'm traveling here, I feel saudade, even though I'm still here. Saudade is a Portuguese word that means this sense of deep longing or nostalgia, and I think it's just because there's so many beautiful things to see and do on this island, that even when you're here, you know you're missing out on so much. We'll definitely come back again, and it's a very, very special place in this world.