Iceland reopens: a land of fire, ice and empty roads
As one of the first countries to welcome travellers back, Iceland offered dramatic landscapes with few crowds.
Among the first countries to welcome travellers back as the world reopened, Iceland offered a compelling proposition: some of the planet's most dramatic landscapes, enjoyed with few other visitors around, in a country whose sparse population and wide-open spaces made it feel naturally suited to the moment.
Iceland is a land of elemental drama, where the forces that shape the Earth are on vivid display. Volcanoes and lava fields, glaciers and ice caves, thundering waterfalls and geysers, black-sand beaches and bubbling geothermal pools crowd a small island just below the Arctic Circle.
The famous Ring Road circles the country, delivering a seemingly endless procession of wonders, while the Golden Circle near the capital Reykjavik offers a taste in a single day. In 2021, a newly erupting volcano on the Reykjanes Peninsula even allowed visitors to hike close to flowing lava, a rare and spectacular sight.
Reykjavik itself is a small, creative capital with a lively food and music scene, and the whole country is powered largely by clean geothermal and hydro energy, lending it a forward-looking feel.
Iceland can be expensive and its weather famously changeable, demanding good planning and flexible layers. But for travellers seeking space, drama and a sense of the raw power of nature, it delivered in abundance, and its early reopening made it a symbol of the cautious return of travel.