Diamond Circle & North Iceland Guide

Stand on the west bank at Dettifoss and the first thing you notice is not the sight but the ground. The rock under your boots vibrates. Around 193 cubic metres of grey glacial water per second, on average, drop forty-four metres off a basalt lip into a canyon, and the spray comes back up so hard that on a windy day you cannot keep a lens clean for ten seconds. There is no viewing platform between you and the drop on the east side, just wet rock and a rope, and nobody is queuing for a selfie because the car park had eleven cars in it.

That contrast is the whole argument for North Iceland. The south has the famous names and the coach traffic. The north has bigger water, a live volcanic lake district, a horseshoe canyon out of Norse folklore, and a fishing town where humpbacks feed within sight of the harbour wall.

The catch is honest and worth stating up front: Akureyri is 388 km from Reykjavik, about five hours of driving without stops, and Dettifoss is another two and a half hours beyond that. This is not a day trip from the capital under any circumstances. It is a region you either fly into or reach as part of a longer loop around the island.

What exactly is the Diamond Circle, and where is it?

The Diamond Circle is a signed touring route in northeast Iceland linking five sites: Goðafoss waterfall, Lake Mývatn, Dettifoss, Ásbyrgi canyon and the whale watching town of Húsavík. The marked route runs about 260 km. Driven as a loop out of Akureyri and back it is closer to 380 km, or a very full day.

The name is deliberate marketing, coined to give the north an answer to the Golden Circle in the southwest, and the comparison is misleading in one important way. The Golden Circle is a 186 km loop with three stops that a visitor can do comfortably in six to eight hours from Reykjavik. The Diamond Circle covers roughly double the distance, has five headline stops rather than three, and starts five hours from the capital.

Treat it as a two-day region at minimum. One day is possible if you are already based in Akureyri or Mývatn and you start early, but you will be checking your watch at Ásbyrgi.

How far is North Iceland from Reykjavik, really?

Reykjavik to Akureyri is 388 km on Route 1, around five hours of driving in summer conditions and longer in winter. From Akureyri, the Diamond Circle sites sit between forty minutes and two and a half hours further on. Anyone quoting the north as a day trip from Reykjavik is quoting a fourteen-hour drive.

The drive north is genuinely pleasant, which softens the number. Route 1 runs up through Borgarnes, past the Vatnsnes turnoff, over the farmland of Skagafjörður, then climbs the Öxnadalsheiði pass into a valley of spiked peaks before dropping into Eyjafjörður and Akureyri. Allow six to seven hours with stops and you have a good day rather than an endurance test.

Add those legs up and the loop from Akureyri is about six hours of driving before a single stop. That arithmetic is exactly why the north pairs best with a full Ring Road itinerary rather than being bolted onto a southwest trip, and it is a big part of the answer to how many days you need in Iceland.

Why is Akureyri the right base for the north?

Akureyri is Iceland's second-largest urban area with roughly 19,000 people, sitting at the head of a long fjord about fifty kilometres from the Arctic Circle. It has a domestic airport with a forty-five minute hop from Reykjavik, real restaurants, car hire desks and the region's tour operators. Everything on the Diamond Circle is within ninety minutes of it.

The town is compact and unusually green for its latitude, sheltered by the fjord walls. The botanical garden grows plants that have no business surviving this far north. Akureyrarkirkja, the stepped concrete church, sits on a stairway above the centre. The traffic lights show red as hearts, a small gesture added after the 2008 financial crash that has been there ever since.

Practically, basing here solves several problems at once. You unpack once instead of moving hotel every night. Car hire and guided day tours both operate from town. And in winter, when Mývatn accommodation thins out, Akureyri stays open and staffed.

Just east of town, the Vaðlaheiði tunnel cuts the drive toward Mývatn, and it is tolled: you pay online after driving through rather than at a booth, so note the date and settle it the same day. The old road over the Víkurskarð pass is still there and free if you prefer the view.

What is there to do around Lake Mývatn?

Lake Mývatn is a shallow lake of roughly 37 square kilometres sitting inside an active volcanic zone, ringed by pseudocraters, lava pillars, a tephra crater you can climb, a hot spring cave and a steam field. It is the densest cluster of volcanic scenery in Iceland, and it takes a full day at minimum.

The lake itself formed when a large basaltic eruption dammed a valley around 2,300 years ago. Where lava flowed over wet ground, trapped steam blew out in explosions that left the pseudocraters you see at Skútustaðir, which look like miniature volcanoes but never erupted from below.

Dimmuborgir is the strangest piece: a field of collapsed lava pillars and arches with marked walking loops, dark and vertical and completely unlike the rest of the landscape. Hverfjall, the tephra crater beside it, is about a kilometre across and takes twenty to thirty minutes to climb on a steep gravel path, with a rim walk and a view over the whole lake basin.

East over the Námaskarð pass, Hverir is a plain of boiling mud pots and roaring fumaroles in ochre and grey, one of the most alien places in the country and covered in detail in our guide to Iceland's volcano and geothermal attractions. Beyond it, the Krafla caldera holds the Víti explosion crater with its green lake and the Leirhnjúkur lava field left by eruptions in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

One honest warning about the name. Mývatn means midge lake. In June and July the non-biting midges swarm in clouds thick enough to make an evening walk unpleasant, and a cheap head net from any local shop is money well spent.

The Nature Baths are the north's counterpart to the famous lagoon in the southwest, usually quieter and generally cheaper, with a view across the lava field instead of a car park. Our roundup of the best hot springs in Iceland beyond the Blue Lagoon puts it in context against the rest of the country's bathing options.

Is Dettifoss worth the drive, and which side should you visit?

Dettifoss is 44 metres high and about 100 metres wide, carrying an average of roughly 193 cubic metres of glacial meltwater per second, which makes it the most powerful waterfall in Europe by volume. The west bank is reached on a paved road and is open most of the year. The east bank gets you closer, and it is gravel and summer only.

The water comes from Vatnajökull via the Jökulsá á Fjöllum, and it is grey with glacial silt rather than clear, which gives the falls their particular heavy, churning look. The canyon below is part of Vatnajökull National Park, and the park's own site at vatnajokulsthjodgardur.is publishes trail conditions and seasonal road status for both approaches.

Choosing a side genuinely changes the visit. The west bank, on road 862, has the better car park, marked paths and an elevated angle across the falls that shows the full width. The east bank, on gravel road 864, brings you out onto rock right at the lip, closer and far more visceral, with more spray and less infrastructure.

A kilometre upstream from Dettifoss, Selfoss is a wide, low waterfall spread across the canyon in several strands, reachable on foot from either car park and skipped by most visitors. Downstream, Hafragilsfoss drops into the deepest part of the gorge. If you have made the drive, budget the extra half hour for at least one of them.

What makes Ásbyrgi canyon different from every other stop?

Ásbyrgi is a horseshoe-shaped canyon about 3.5 km long and a kilometre wide, walled by cliffs up to 100 metres high, with a wooded floor of birch and a pond at the closed end. Norse tradition says it is the hoofprint of Odin's eight-legged horse Sleipnir. Geology says catastrophic glacial floods carved it.

Both stories improve the place. Standing at Botnstjörn, the small pond at the head of the canyon, with vertical rock curving around you and birdsong echoing off it, the folklore explanation feels no less plausible than the science. In the middle of the horseshoe sits Eyjan, a freestanding rock island with a trail to its top and a view down the length of the canyon.

What genuinely surprises people is the vegetation. Iceland is famously bare, and Ásbyrgi is a sheltered forest of birch and willow, quiet and warm out of the wind. After days of black lava and grey water it lands like a completely different country. There are marked trails from twenty minutes to several hours, plus a campsite and the Gljúfrastofa visitor centre near the entrance.

Allow ninety minutes for the short version, half a day if you want to walk the rim. It is also one of the best places in the north to be in poor weather, since the cliffs cut the wind that would make Dettifoss miserable on the same afternoon.

Is Húsavík really the best whale watching town in Iceland?

Húsavík is a fishing town of around 2,300 people on Skjálfandi bay, and it has built its identity on whales. Boats go out from the harbour in season to see humpbacks, minke whales, white-beaked dolphins and harbour porpoises, with blue whales sighted occasionally in early summer. The season runs roughly April to October and peaks in June, July and August.

The reason it works is the bay itself. Skjálfandi is deep, fed by nutrient-rich glacial river water, and sheltered enough that trips are cancelled less often than the open coast would allow. Several operators run restored wooden oak schooners rather than RIBs, which is slower and quieter and a better experience if you are not in a hurry.

Dress for it properly. Even in July, an open boat in the north Atlantic is cold, and the overalls handed out at the dock exist for good reason. Trips typically run two and a half to three hours. Our dedicated guide to whale watching in Iceland compares Húsavík with Reykjavik, Akureyri and the westfjords by season and success rate.

The town has more than boats. The Whale Museum is a serious, well-organised exhibition with full skeletons hanging from the ceiling. GeoSea is a set of geothermal seawater baths built on the cliff above the harbour, looking straight out over the bay toward the mountains, and it is one of the best-sited hot pools in the country. The wooden church from 1907 is the postcard. And yes, the town's brief starring role in a 2020 Eurovision comedy film is still visibly good-humoured about itself.

What else is worth seeing in North Iceland beyond the Diamond Circle?

The north is wider than the branded loop. Tröllaskagi, the Troll Peninsula between two fjords, holds Siglufjörður and its herring museum. Hvítserkur, the basalt sea stack on the Vatnsnes peninsula, sits on the way up from Reykjavik. And Grímsey island, a ferry or short flight from the mainland, actually crosses the Arctic Circle.

Tröllaskagi is the detour most worth making. The road runs north from Akureyri through Dalvík, then through tunnels to Ólafsfjörður and Siglufjörður, a herring boom town wedged under mountains at the top of the peninsula. The Herring Era Museum there reconstructs the industry that once made this the busiest port in the country, and the harbourfront has been restored beautifully. Hofsós, further round, has a small swimming pool with an infinity edge looking out over Skagafjörður that is worth a stop on its own.

Hvítserkur is a fifteen-metre basalt stack standing in the shallows off Vatnsnes, shaped enough like a drinking animal that every culture that has seen it has named it after one. The peninsula road is gravel in stretches, and the same coast has accessible seal colonies. It adds roughly two hours to the drive north, and it breaks up the 388 km slog neatly.

Grímsey is the only inhabited part of Iceland on the Arctic Circle, reached by a three-hour ferry from Dalvík or a short flight from Akureyri. In summer the cliffs are dense with puffins and arctic terns. A concrete sphere on the island marks the circle's position, and it gets moved each year, because the Arctic Circle itself drifts.

When is the best time to drive the Diamond Circle?

June through August is the practical answer: all roads open, near-endless daylight, whale watching at its peak and the highland tracks passable. September and early October give you colour, thin crowds and returning aurora. Winter is genuinely rewarding but cuts your options, since the east bank of Dettifoss and several minor roads close.

North Iceland has a useful advantage over the south that few visitors know about. It sits in a partial rain shadow behind the island's ice caps, so summer days here are often drier and clearer than the same day on the South Coast. It is also colder in winter, with more settled snow inland.

If you are driving in the winter half of the year, check the Icelandic Road Administration's conditions map every single morning, not the night before, and read our notes on Iceland road conditions and winter driving. The Öxnadalsheiði pass between Reykjavik and Akureyri is the section most likely to close. For aurora chasing around Mývatn, the cloud and activity forecast from the Icelandic Meteorological Office is the source worth trusting, and our guide to the best time to see the Northern Lights covers the timing.

In midsummer the north gets the full effect of continuous light, and Grímsey at the Arctic Circle is as far as you can push it in Iceland. There is more on that in our guide to the midnight sun in Iceland.

How do you fit North Iceland into a real itinerary?

The north works on trips of eight days or more, or on a short trip built around a flight into Akureyri. On a five to seven day loop, most travellers reach Mývatn and Goðafoss but skip Dettifoss and Ásbyrgi. On ten to twelve days, the whole Diamond Circle fits without rushing.

The eight-day guided loop is the most common way visitors reach the north without driving 388 km themselves, and the ten to twelve day self-drive packages are the ones that give the region two nights instead of one. Prices in our own line-up run from $2,849 for eight guided days by minibus to $3,719 for twelve self-drive days, with a winter-specific ten-day self-drive at $3,070 for travellers who want the north under snow.

Whichever shape you choose, resist the temptation to see the Diamond Circle and the South Coast waterfalls in the same three days. They are on opposite sides of the island, and the road between them is 500 km long. If you are weighing driving yourself against being driven for a route this long, our comparison of guided tours and self-drive trips is the place to settle it.

How do you reach the north without driving yourself?

Three options work: a forty-five minute domestic flight from Reykjavik to Akureyri, the scheduled long-distance bus that takes about six and a half hours, or a multi-day guided tour that includes the north in its route. Once in Akureyri, local operators run day tours to Mývatn, Dettifoss and Húsavík.

The fly-in option deserves more attention than it gets. Three days based in Akureyri, using local day tours, delivers more of the north than a rushed seven-day self-drive loop does, and it removes the two longest driving days entirely. Our guide to getting around Iceland without a car covers the schedules and the seasonal gaps.

Who should skip North Iceland?

Skip it if you have five days or fewer and no plan to fly north, if you are visiting in deep winter without winter driving experience, or if your trip is built around ice caves and glacier lagoons, which are all in the south. There is no shame in saving the north for a second trip. Most repeat visitors do exactly that.

Winter self-drivers should be especially honest with themselves. The north is beautiful under snow, but the Öxnadalsheiði pass, the exposed stretches around Mývatn and the road out to Dettifoss are all places where conditions turn quickly, and daylight is down to three or four hours in December. Flying to Akureyri and joining local tours removes most of that risk.

Anyone whose priority list is topped by Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon or an ice cave trip should stay south, because both sit on the opposite corner of the island. And if your reason for coming is aurora rather than landscape, the north's clearer skies help, but you do not need to drive 388 km for a good display.

For everyone else, the north is the part of Iceland that still feels unmanaged. If that appeals, browse Iceland tour packages that route all the way round the island rather than doubling back from Vík, and give the region two nights instead of one.