Reykjavik, Iceland · Europe

6 ideal things to do in Reykjavik

The short list, pulled out of the long essay. No opening hours, because they change and I would only get them wrong — just what is worth your morning, roughly when to turn up, and where I have wasted time so you don’t have to.

By Ščenza

Last checked February 4, 2025

1. 01

   Swim at Sundhöll Reykjavíkur

   Barónsstígur, five minutes from Hallgrímskirkja·Early morning, with the regulars

   Guðjón Samúelsson's 1937 indoor pool — the city's oldest purpose-built one, geothermal from the day it opened — gained an outdoor pool and hot tubs in 2017, so you can now sit outdoors at forty degrees while snow lands on your head, which is the whole Icelandic proposition in a sentence. Shower naked and thoroughly first; the attendant will tell you if you don't, and will do it in front of everyone. Diocletian had Split doing this seventeen centuries ago and we have somehow let the habit lapse.

2. 02

   Up the Hallgrímskirkja tower

   Skólavörðuholt, at the top of Skólavörðustígur·A clear afternoon; there is a lift

   Forty-one years in the building, finished in 1986, and modelled on the columnar basalt you will meet later at Svartifoss — so the building that looks most like Iceland is also the newest large thing in it. A lift takes you up the 74-metre tower for the view: coloured roofs, the bay, Esja across the water with the next weather already visible on it. Downstairs the Klais organ has 5,275 pipes, and if you catch someone practising, stay. Best free half-hour in the city.

3. 03

   The Settlement Exhibition on Aðalstræti

   Aðalstræti, city centre·Save it for a rainy hour — you will be given one

   Builders digging a hotel foundation in 2001 struck the wall of a Viking-age longhouse, and instead of moving it the city built the exhibition around it, in the basement where it lies. You walk around the actual turf wall, dated by a volcanic ash layer to within a year or two of 871. It is one room, and it is done extremely well. Reykjavik keeps discovering that it is older than it looks, which is the opposite of my problem.

4. 04

   Kolaportið flea market

   The old customs house, Tryggvagata, by the harbour·Weekends only, all year round

   Iceland's only year-round flea market fills the ground floor of the old customs house every weekend: lopapeysa jumpers of wildly varying quality, second-hand books in a language you cannot read, and a food end selling dried fish, flatbread and the fermented shark that exists mainly so that Icelanders can watch foreigners eat it. I have eaten it. Once. This is our Pazar in Split with wool in place of tomatoes, and considerably better lighting.

5. 05

   Walk out to the Grótta lighthouse at dusk

   Seltjarnarnes, the western tip — about an hour on foot·Aurora season, September to April. Closed 1 May–15 July for nesting terns

   Go west along the shore until the streetlights give out and you reach a lighthouse on a tidal island, which is where people who live here go to look for the northern lights instead of paying for a coach. Check the tide before you cross; the causeway floods and somebody gets stranded on it every winter. From May to mid-July the arctic terns are nesting and the islet is off limits — and if you did try, the terns would make the position clear themselves.

6. 06

   The ferry out to Viðey

   Kollafjörður bay — ferry from Skarfabakki·Daily in summer, weekends in winter; the Peace Tower is lit 9 October to 8 December

   A short crossing puts you on an almost empty island with an eighteenth-century house, Richard Serra's nine pairs of basalt columns set around the shoreline, and Yoko Ono's Imagine Peace Tower, which throws a column of light up into the sky between Lennon's birthday and the date he was shot. In summer it is a walk among nesting birds. In winter the ferry runs at weekends and you may get the whole island to yourself, which I did, in horizontal rain, and enjoyed considerably more than I expected to.