This is a marvelous park! The national park is the largest in Europe and it’s mostly covered by the second largest glacier in Europe. What is the best way to visit such a huge park, with such a harsh nature of fire and ice? As a normal visitor its only possible to scratch at the edges.

The best way to visit is with your own car along the ring road nr 1 as we did. The plan was to first visit Skaftafell area which is supposed to be the best place to go hiking and it is easy accessible. Then on an impulse, after a morning visit to the canyon Fjadrarglufjur, we decided to drive to the Laki area.  Laki is a volcanic fissure in the western part of the national park not covered with ice. The drive was an adventure itself. You will need a 4x4 vehicle. The road is a rough one, 45 km and includes several river crossings. Our rental was a Nissan Qashqai and it (barely) did the job. We stopped to see Fagrifoss,  a beautiful waterfall. The scenery and nature along the route is really different from what we are familiar with. It’s a variation of lava and rocks, but still colorful.  At the parking lot next to the mountain Laki a park ranger met us, a nice surprise. He gave us information about the national park, Laki area and “rules” for driving on islandic gravel roads. Inside the national park there is circle route with three designated stops. First we hiked up the mountain Laki , 818 moh, easy hike 1/2 h. From the top there was an excellent view of the Lakigigar, crater row from the 1783-84 eruptions, the lava fields, the Vatnajökul glacier and the Katla glacier. The summer of 1783 several fissures opened up and formed 135 craters in a row which in turn erupted a vast amount of molten rocks and gasses for eight months. The Laki eruptions caused a severe impact on Iceland, but also to the northern hemisphere with drop in temperature and crop failure. We also hiked through one the craters and checked out another crater with a lake.  The drive through lavafields overgrown by green moss is almost surreal. It turned out to be a day-trip, but well worth the effort getting there.

Later, on the way to our guest house, we went to a couple of glacier lagoons (Svinafellsjökull, Fjallsarlon and Jökulsarlon) with plenty of small icebergs. The road to Svinafellsjökull was only 2 km, but really bad with potholes, Fjallsarlon was the best stop, Jökulsarlon very touristy. The next day we went on a guided half-day glacier tour on the Breidamerkurjökull . It was an interesting trip. The summer glacier is dirty and not very photogenic. The dirt is lava emerging from melting ice. The glacier looks smooth from a distance, but it’s not. There a plenty of big holes and cracks from melting water and tiny “caves” with some blue ice. The ice-cap is melting fast, disturbingly fast due to climate changes. And by the way, entering ice caves wih deep blue ice are for winter visits only.

Along the ring road there are several glacier tongues to be seen. From Höfn you have a great view to seven of them at once. In the north we also visited Jökulsárgljúfur and Dettifoss/Selfoss. Actually, this part of the national park did not end up inscribed, but it still worth a visit.

We really enjoyed Vatnajökull, it is full of elements from vulcanos, craters, lavafields, glaciers, lagoons, alpine flowers, to roaring waterfall, but you will need to give it some time.