Three day trip
From basalt cathedrals to witch-country fjords, and back through cheese and steam. The aurora is the easy part. The hard part is everything you’d otherwise miss between Reykjavík and the dark.
Three days. Aurora over Strandir
Three days chasing the northern lights through Snæfellsnes, the witch coast and the dairy valleys of West Iceland, small group, warm beds, dark skies guaranteed.
Duration
3 days / 2 nights
Departs
Your location, Reykjavík
Group size
Max. 14 guests
Season
Sept – April
From
€ 1 950
From basalt cathedrals to witch-country fjords, and back through cheese and steam.
The aurora is the easy part. The hard part is everything you’d otherwise miss between Reykjavík and the dark, the lava field a thousand years older than Christ, the museum where Iceland still pretends to believe in witches, the dairy that turns morning milk into the country’s best ice cream by noon.
Our three-day route loops you west through Snæfellsnes, up into the lonelier-than-lonely Strandir coast, and home through Borgarfjörður. You sleep two nights in the same farm so you stop unpacking; you eat dinner cooked by the people who own the place; you go aurora-hunting until 1am and then sit in a hot pot waiting for the sky to act up again.
Small group, slow pace, dark skies. The way Iceland was supposed to be.
Day 1
Reykjavík to Hella, the long way around Snæfellsnes.
Saga country, basalt columns, Iceland’s most-photographed mountain and the slow climb into Strandir as the sky turns black.
We collect you from your hotel in the heart of the capital with hot coffee already in the van. By the time the city slips behind us, you’ll know your driver’s name and the next 72 hours will feel a little less like a tour and a little more like a road trip with friends.
Day 1 · Route
Reykjavík → Borgarnes → Snæfellsnes loop → Búðardalur → Þröskuldar → Hella Guesthouse
Drive~360 km
Stops X 10
Walking~2 km
2. Borgarnes
Stretch break
An hour out of the city, through the Hvalfjörður tunnel, we stop in the saga-country town spread along its peninsula. Restrooms, a quick coffee, and a glance at the seafront sculpture path before we turn west onto the road that swings around Snæfellsnes.
3. Gerðuberg Cliffs
Stop
A wall of hexagonal basalt columns rising clean out of the moss, like organ pipes carved by a tidy giant. Five minutes off the ring road, no entry fee, and the first guaranteed this-is-Iceland moment of the trip.
5. Kolgrafafjörður
Photo stop
A narrow fjord crossed by a single causeway with a small layby. In winter, herring fill the bay and bring orca and white-tailed eagles within easy view from the road. In summer, it’s just postcard turquoise and sharp peaks.
6. Grundarfjörður
Lunch
A working fishing town of 900 souls, set between the sea and a half-circle of mountains. We stop on the harbour for fish-and-chips or a hot bowl of soup — straight off the boats that came in this morning.
7. Kirkjufell
The Mountain
The most photographed mountain in Iceland — a perfect 463-metre cone the locals named Church Mountain long before Hollywood arrived. We park at Kirkjufellsfoss for the classic three-tier composition: foreground cascade, mid-ground river, sharp peak behind. Bring the camera you brought your camera for.
8. Búðardalur
Break
A dairy-country pit-stop on Hvammsfjörður, halfway to our farm. Fuel and a stretch, plus a quick stop at the saga centre dedicated to Eiríkur the Red and his son Leif — the Vikings who sailed from this exact coast to Greenland, and on to America.
9. Þröskuldar Pass
View
The all-weather road climbs out of the dairy valleys onto an empty highland of moss and meltwater. We stop at the top for the first sight of Steingrímsfjörður below — the gateway view into Strandir. Thirty kilometres of nobody, then the fjords arrive all at once.
10. Hella Guesthouse
Dinner & Bed
A working farm turned guesthouse on the south shore of Steingrímsfjörður. Warm rooms, shared kitchen, horses on the hillside. Dinner is whatever the family is cooking — usually lamb that lived a few fields away.
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11. Aurora hunt
Out into the dark
No light pollution for fifty kilometres in any direction. Your guide is watching the KP forecast all evening; when the sky starts to flicker, the van rolls out. Hot chocolate, thermal blankets, no light beyond the headlamps. We stay out until the lights stop or you do.
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Day 2
A full day along Strandir.
Driftwood beaches, witch museums, sheep farms and seaside hot pots — Iceland’s wildest coast, end to end, with the same warm bed waiting at the end of it.
1. Drangsnes & Frystihúsið Drangur
Drive north
An hour’s drive up the coast to one of the most isolated farmsteads in Iceland — abandoned, rebuilt, kept alive as a sanctuary. We walk the headland, hear the story of the last family to leave, and feel the kind of silence that no city dweller has ever properly heard.
Day 2 · Route
Hella → Drangar → Bjarnarfjörður → Hólmavík → Drangsnes → Hella
Drive ~ 180 km
Stops X 11
Walking ~ 4 km
2. Bjarnarfjörður · driftwood shore
Beach walk
The Atlantic delivers Siberian timber to this stretch of black sand. Whole tree trunks, polished by 4,000 km of ocean, stacked like a giant’s matchsticks. We walk a slow kilometre with cameras out — and if you can convince the group, take a dip in the small hot pool tucked just inland.
4. Galdrasafnið · Museum of Sorcery
Museum
The Westfjords were where Iceland’s seventeenth-century witch panic burned hottest — and almost every witch put on trial was a man. This small, brilliant museum has the staves, the spells and the necropants (yes, you read that right). Macabre, funny, deeply Icelandic.
6. Sauðfjárbúið Staður · sheep farm
Farm visit
A small family sheep farm overlooking Steingrímsfjörður, opened just for us. Coffee in the kitchen, a wander through the barns at the slow Icelandic pace, and a chance to meet the dogs who actually run the operation.
7. Staðakirkja
Detour
A tiny country church beside the farm, painted white and red against the slope. Ten minutes inside, and you’ll understand why Icelanders still build them this small: anything bigger would be lonely.
8. Hella · seal-watching
Wildlife
A short walk to the rocky point below the guesthouse, where two dozen harbour seals haul out most afternoons of the year. They don’t perform, they don’t pose. They lie there. We sit on rocks and watch them lie there. It’s better than it sounds.
9. Drangsnes hot pots
Soak
Three concrete tubs built into the sea wall in the next village over. Free, public, 38–42 °C, with the Atlantic crashing on the rocks two metres below. You change in a small wooden hut, you bring your own towel, and you do not check your phone — there’s no signal, and that’s the point.
8. Hella Guesthouse
Dinner
Back at the farm. Long table, candles, three courses, a glass of something. By tonight the group is no longer fourteen strangers.
9. Aurora hunt & bonfire
Bonfire & lights
If the forecast cooperates, we light a driftwood fire on the beach below the farm and wait. If the sky shifts elsewhere, we drive — we know every dark layby from here to Bjarnarfjörður. Either way: hot drinks, blankets, no rush.
Day 3
Hella back to Reykjavík, via Borgarfjörður.
Farm cheese, a thunderous waterfall and Europe’s most powerful hot spring, a slow, steaming roll back to the capital with the smell of woodsmoke still on your jacket.
1. Búðardalur
Departure from Hella
A last coffee on the road south, back through the pass and down into dairy country. Restrooms, a bakery stop, a final glance at Hvammsfjörður before we turn inland.
Day 3 · Route
Hella → Búðardalur → Erpsstaðir → Glanni → Deildartunguhver → Reykjavík
Drive ~ 310 km
Stops X 6
Walking ~ 1 km
2. Erpsstaðir Dairy Farm
Tasting
A working dairy of 50 cows that turns morning milk into the country’s most famous ice cream by noon. We visit the barns, taste the skyr, taste the cheese, and almost certainly leave with cones in hand — even in February, especially in February.
3. Glanni
Waterfall
A wide, low waterfall in the Norðurá river, more felt than seen — the whole valley vibrates softly when you stand at the lookout. A short, well-built path; a great lunch spot; and according to old folklore, a known haunt of huldufólk, the hidden people. Walk quietly.
4. Deildartunguhver
Steam
Europe’s most powerful hot spring, with around 180 litres of near boiling 97 °C water rising from the ground every second. The spring supplies hot water to much of West Iceland and forms the centrepiece of the small geothermal park around it. Standing by the railing, the heavy steam can almost hide the landscape behind it.
5. Borgarnes
Optional
If the group needs one, this is usually the stop for restrooms, the last bakery visit, or a final coffee before the drive home through the Hvalfjörður tunnel. Most days, though, we continue straight through.
6. Reykjavík
Drop off
We drop you back at your hotel by 17:30. You will sleep deeply tonight. We promise.