Iceland vs Norway: What Nordic Country is Best for a Summer Road Trip?

Today we will run through a detailed comparison of two of the most incredible countries on earth for a summer road trip. Both have amazing natural wonders that will stop you in your tracks everywhere you turn. But there is so much more to consider than this. For starters they are both damn expensive and among the most costly countries on earth to visit. So to make sure you have the best experience possible we're going to do a detailed comparison on 11 different points so you can decide once and for all which country you want to visit first. We're going to be keeping score along the way and we promise you a definitive answer. Both countries are incredible outdoor destinations so we're going to start off by looking at four different points to compare the natural wonders of each country. First of all we will look at the mountains. Now it may surprise you to learn that for a country with so many volcanoes and glaciers that Iceland is not the most mountainous country. In fact Iceland's tallest mountain wouldn't even rate in the top 100 when compared to Norway. So while Iceland can't match the size or the sheer number of mountains that you'll find in Norway they do have a unique character and are covered in lush greenery and they are very unique but they simply can't match the epic mountains that tower over the roadways and create a very dramatic backdrop all over Norway. So that is one point to Norway to kick off the scoring. Next we're going to look at the waterfalls. Now it would be easy to think that with bigger mountains comparing waterfalls would be no contest but height is not the only thing that makes a waterfall stand out. Width, water volume, surrounding scenery and accessibility all contribute to how you experience a waterfall. Both countries have a long list of incredible waterfalls and this might be the toughest category to judge out of our whole list. Iceland has such beauties as Gullfoss, Seljandafoss, Skogafoss, Goafoss and Detifoss whereas Norway has Lartafossen, Steindalfossen, Vindafossen and my personal favorite out of all of them Langfossen. But I don't think that's enough to displace Iceland as the winner here. The sheer number of epic waterfalls is very hard to beat but you'll never feel shortchanged by Norway if you are chasing waterfalls. This is a very difficult point to award to Iceland because both countries have such incredible waterfalls. I'm a real sucker for a water view and I'm at my happiest when having a glass of wine at the end of a big day exploring overlooking a nice waterway. So you can imagine how much I enjoyed staying here at what I consider to be the best value roadside motel anywhere in the world. It's in a small town of Olden in Norway in the west Norwegian fjords. It was an amazing little spot and I'll leave a link in the description so you can check it out for yourself. When you combine the fjords and the towering mountains we discussed earlier you have some of the most dramatic landscapes you'll ever see with this glowing blue water everywhere you look. Iceland has some incredible glacial waterways as well as lagoons filled with icebergs. Being an island there's also an endless string of coastal towns with their own sea outlook but most of the villages that we visited were incredibly windy and that makes it very hard to compete with the pleasant surroundings of the fjords. So for that reason Norway gets the point. Our final nature related point is the colors of the landscapes that you will encounter and this is one area where Iceland has an edge on probably every country on earth. You will find colors in Iceland that you never knew existed and that's a big part of what makes it such an exciting country to explore. The volcanic earth provides incredible contrast that just cannot be matched by Norway or pretty much any other country for that matter. Norway has nice green valleys, huge gray mountains and of course those glowing blue waterways. It's a beautiful combination but it can't match the deep contrast of Iceland. So that levels the scores at two points each. Hopefully you're keeping your own score so you can mark according to what's most important to you. If you're liking the video so far please hit that like button and subscribe to the channel. Now remember this whole comparison is in the context of the best country for a summer road trip so we're next going to look at how easy it is to get around each country. The quality of roads and supporting infrastructure is excellent in both countries but Norway seems to have a greater reliance on ferries and barges to cross some of the waterways and link up the roads amongst the fjords. It's actually a much easier experience than it sounds like and they do an amazing job to connect you where you need to go without it interrupting your trip too much. But it is an inconvenience and it does slow you down a little bit. Similar connections exist in Iceland but it doesn't seem to be as critical for getting around and more of a choice. Norway also has a number of paid tollways which may leave you with One of the great things about road tripping around Iceland is the ring road will take you pretty much anywhere you want to go. Most of your stopovers will be detours off the ring road and then you end up straight back on it. This makes it very hard to get lost. We also didn't encounter a single tollway so for these reasons Iceland gets the point. So while we update the scoring a little footnote that's relevant to driving around both of these countries is the legal blood alcohol limits. Norway has a very conservative 0.02 and Iceland 0.05. Now these are both lower than a lot of other countries so we won't use this as a point of comparison for the scoring but it is important to know so you don't get caught out. Moving along to our next major category the cost of traveling around Norway and Iceland. As mentioned at the top of the video these are two of the most expensive countries to travel around on earth. We've done our best to provide some direct comparisons on things like vehicle rental and accommodation. All prices mentioned are in US dollars and you will find links to all of our sources in the description. First we'll look at the cost of renting a vehicle. We've used rentalcars.com who make it very easy to compare prices and availability across a number of rental car providers. For the sake of the comparison we've selected a one-week period in the peak summer month of July with pickup and drop-off both in the capital city of each country and to be honest I was amazed at the difference in price. The average daily rental cost for Iceland was $138 a day compared to Norway where it was $54 a day. This is a fantastic deal if you are able to pick up and drop off your vehicle in the same location. We paid far more than this for our rental vehicle in Norway but that may have been because we picked it up in the town of Stavanger and dropped it back in Oslo. The total that we paid was actually very close to the price quoted for Iceland here on a per day basis and when you also factor in the additional tolls which we mentioned earlier this added an extra $100 or so to our 10-day vehicle rental cost. But based purely on the data here it's an easy point for Norway and if you plan your trip accordingly there's no reason you can't secure a great deal such as this. If you prefer to travel by camper van then it's a very similar story with Iceland averaging $240 a day for the cheapest two-person camper van and Norway $176 a day. Again a fairly big difference there and an easy point for Norway. The big leveler in all of this is the cost of tollways. I mentioned earlier that we spent over In Iceland we spent nothing. So Iceland gets a point bringing it back to four points each. Next we will look at the cost of hotels. To generate a sample that we could use for the comparison we were forced to stick to the capital cities of Oslo in Norway and Reykjavik in Iceland only because that was the only place we could get enough hotels. From there we selected the same one-week period in July sorted to three star hotels only for a nice middle-of-the-road sample then we took the 10 cheapest options in each city. The result was Oslo was the cheapest with an average of $178 a night compared to $212 a night in Reykjavik which is nearly 20% more expensive. If we looked at just the cheapest option then you could stay in Oslo for $120 a night and Reykjavik for $132 a night which is 10% higher at the bottom end. So that is another point for Norway. We attempted to extend the comparison to camping grounds around the country so you know what it will cost you to park your camper van or motorhome but we actually found it quite difficult to find reliable data on a large scale. So as a general rule an Icelandic camping ground will cost you to park your vehicle whereas Norway what we found was per vehicle and that was around $40. Considering that the vast majority of the expense is in renting the camper van or motorhome itself the price of the camping ground is somewhat incidental to the total cost of your trip so we've called this one a tie and decided to award no points. Moving on to the activities in Norway and Iceland and how they compare. The list of activities is actually very similar you can go ice caving, do a glacier hike, do some amazing hiking, kayaking, whale watching but there's one thing that you can do in Iceland that you can't do in Norway and that is hike to an active volcano. This is simply one of the most incredible things you could ever do and is an experience that Norway can't match. So Iceland gets the point here which brings it to five points each but I did promise you a definitive answer so we're going to go to a tiebreaker and take a look at how the weather compares in each country and while this might sound a bit dull compared to the other items on our list having good weather can make or break your whole vacation. The unfortunate reality is that both countries are going to be gloomy you're probably going to get some rain unless you are incredibly lucky. So the question is how much rain and how warm is it going to get while you're enjoying your summer road trip. The other caveat to the averages that I'm going to share with you is that Norway is an incredibly long country from north to south so you're going to have huge variations and I think that actually works against Norway in terms of dragging down the averages. Having said that Norway comes out ahead on just about every comparative measure in terms of the weather. In the summer months Norway enjoys an average maximum daily temperature about 30% higher than Iceland. Now again this is going to vary a lot depending on where in Norway you are. Iceland makes some ground back with the average number of rain days per month slightly lower through the summer months averaging 8 to 11 rain days per month compared to Norway which is 10 to 11. Very close but a very important difference. But despite the lower number of average rain days in Iceland Norway actually averages more sunshine hours per day which gives you an idea of just how gloomy Iceland can be through those summer months and I think that having as much sunshine as possible is critical to enjoying your summer vacation on the road. So for that reason Norway gets the point and pulls just ahead of Iceland at six points to five. So how does that compare to the score you came up with? Please leave it in the comments so I can take a look I'd love to know what you think. If I had to pick a favorite I'd probably choose Iceland even though the scoring didn't quite turn out that way. Both countries are truly magnificent and I really hope that everyone watching this gets to experience both countries at one time or another but hopefully this video has helped you get a little bit closer to choosing where you'll go for that first adventure.