Skaftafell is the southern gateway to Vatnajokull National Park, about four hours east of Reykjavik on the ring road, and it is the one place on the south coast where you get out of the car and walk into mountains rather than looking at them. Vatnajokull is the largest ice cap in Europe outside the Arctic, covering roughly eight per cent of Iceland, and Skaftafell sits in a green wedge between two of its outlet glaciers.
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you buy through them, Roman Trail earns a small commission at no extra cost to you.
What distinguishes it from the other south coast stops is that it rewards a day rather than twenty minutes. There is a visitor centre, a campsite, a network of marked trails, Iceland's highest peak above it, and the main place in the country where ordinary visitors walk on a glacier with a guide.
One honest note about the photographs. Our set is seventeen frames by ten photographers and seven of the ten shot Svartifoss, the basalt-column waterfall. The three here are an ice cave, the glacier from above and Svartifoss with a person in front of it for scale, which between them cover what you actually come for.
We receive a fee when you get a quote from World Nomads using this link. We do not represent World Nomads. This is not a recommendation to buy travel insurance.
What Is Here
Skaftafellsjokull is the glacier tongue you can walk to, and the walk to its edge is flat and easy. About forty five minutes each way from the car park on a well made path, ending at a lagoon of grey meltwater with the ice face beyond it. It is free, it needs no guide, and it is the single best short walk on the south coast. What it also shows you, if you look at the markers, is how far the ice has retreated in living memory, which is signed along the path and is sobering.
Walking ON the glacier is a guided activity and that is not a formality. Operators run two to five hour glacier walks from the car park, supplying crampons, harness, helmet and axe, and the guides are reading crevasses and meltwater channels that are invisible to anyone else. You cannot do this alone. People have died trying.
The ice caves are a winter activity, roughly November to March, and they are natural and temporary. Meltwater carves tunnels under the glacier in summer and they refreeze solid enough to enter in winter, which means the cave that was there last year is gone and a new one has formed somewhere else. They are reached by guided trip, often in a modified vehicle, and the blue of the ice in them is not a photographic trick. Outside winter, operators run man-made ice tunnels instead and are generally honest about the difference.
Svartifoss is a twenty metre waterfall in an amphitheatre of hexagonal basalt columns, reached by a 1.8 kilometre uphill path from the visitor centre, forty five minutes each way. The columns inspired the interior of Hallgrimskirkja in Reykjavik. It is the most photographed thing here by a wide margin.
Above everything is Hvannadalshnukur at 2,110 metres, Iceland's highest point, which is a serious guided glacier climb of twelve to fifteen hours and not a walk. The marked trails from the visitor centre, by contrast, run from twenty minutes to a full day and the Sjonarnipa viewpoint over the glacier is the best value of them.
When to Go
Summer, June to August, gives the full trail network open, long light, glacier walks running all day and the only reasonable conditions for the high routes. It is also the busiest, though Skaftafell absorbs crowds better than the roadside stops because people spread out onto paths.
Winter, November to March, is the only time the natural ice caves exist, and that is a strong reason to come then. The trade is short daylight, a reduced trail network and a road that closes.
The shoulder seasons, April to May and September to October, are the best compromise for the walks: the paths are open, the coaches have thinned, and from late September there is aurora. Early October is probably the single best week here.
Whatever the month, the park publishes trail conditions and the operators cancel glacier trips on weather. Check road.is and vedur.is before you travel and expect the ring road east of Vik to shut in winter storms.
Getting There
By car, Route 1 east from Reykjavik about 330 kilometres, four to five hours without stops, and nobody does it without stops. There is a large pay car park at the visitor centre. Most people break the drive at Vik or stay near Kirkjubaejarklaustur.
By organised tour, multi-day south coast trips from Reykjavik include Skaftafell, usually with a glacier walk booked in. A day trip from Reykjavik is possible and is around eleven hours of which four are driving.
By bus, scheduled coaches run the ring road and stop at the visitor centre in summer, with a much reduced winter service.
If you hire a car in Iceland there is one clause worth knowing before you sign, and the FCDO states it rather than hinting at it: THE WEATHER CAN CAUSE DAMAGE TO RENTAL CARS THAT IS NOT COVERED BY INSURANCE. Strong winds are common and throw up sand and ash that strips paintwork, and in its own words BRITISH TOURISTS HAVE HAD TO PAY LARGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY to repair hire cars damaged that way. Sand and ash protection is sold as a separate product by most Icelandic hire companies and is the one add-on that is usually worth taking. Two related points: BREAKDOWN RECOVERY COSTS IN REMOTE AREAS CAN BE VERY HIGH, and OFF-ROAD DRIVING IS STRICTLY CONTROLLED and illegal outside marked tracks, with large fines, because the vegetation does not recover.
Is Skaftafell Safe for Women?
Skaftafell is extremely safe from crime and the glacier is genuinely lethal to the unguided, and those two facts are the whole of the assessment. Iceland has among the lowest violent crime rates in the world, the park is staffed, and the campsite and visitor centre are busy and ordinary.
Do not walk onto the ice without a guide. This is the one hard rule here. An outlet glacier is not a frozen lake: it is moving, it is riddled with crevasses that are bridged by snow and invisible from above, and it has moulins, which are vertical meltwater shafts that go down a long way. The surface looks walkable from the edge of the lagoon and it is not. The guided walks exist precisely because reading that ground is a skill, and the equipment they issue, crampons, harness, helmet and axe, is the minimum rather than a precaution.
The second thing is the meltwater lagoon at the glacier's foot. The ice calves into it without warning, the water is a degree or two above freezing, and the shore is unstable gravel. Do not climb on stranded ice blocks and do not get between the water and the face.
The third is ordinary mountain exposure on the marked trails: weather here turns within the hour, the upper paths have no shelter, and the Svartifoss path is steep enough to be slick in rain.
One sentence on Iceland's safety page deserves to be read twice, because it names the three things that actually hurt visitors and all three are things people come here to look at: GOING TOO CLOSE TO THE OCEAN, CLIFF EDGES AND HOT SPRINGS ARE COMMON CAUSES OF ACCIDENTS IN ICELAND. That is not a generic caution. The ocean here produces sneaker waves, which run far higher up a beach than the sets before them with no visible warning and which have killed people standing on black sand looking out to sea. Cliff edges in Iceland are frequently unfenced, often undercut, and made of material that gives way. Hot springs and mud pots are at or near boiling, the ground around them can be a thin crust over water at that temperature, and the burns are severe. The rule in all three cases is the same and it is unglamorous: keep back further than feels necessary, never turn your back on the sea, and stay on the boardwalks and marked paths in a geothermal area.
Iceland runs a national system for exactly the situation a visitor gets into and the FCDO points at it by name. SAFETRAVEL ICELAND publishes route conditions and hazard guides and LETS YOU LODGE A TRAVEL PLAN, so that if you do not return someone knows where to look, and the FCDO's own instruction is to leave your plans and contact details either with your hotel or on Safe Travel. Alongside it, the Icelandic Met Office carries weather and aurora and seismic alerts, the Road Administration carries road status, and 112 is both the emergency number and an app that transmits your position to the rescue services. None of that costs anything, and in a country where SEARCH AND RESCUE MAY BE LIMITED IN SOME AREAS, which the FCDO says plainly because Iceland is inside the Arctic Circle, using it is the difference between an incident and a statistic.
Icelandic driving rules differ from British ones in ways that carry fines of up to about five hundred pounds, and the FCDO lists them. KEEP DIPPED HEADLIGHTS ON YEAR ROUND, day and night, which is a legal requirement. Speed limits are lower than in the UK and the DRINK DRIVING LIMIT IS LOWER TOO. Suitable tyres are required, including winter tyres when conditions call for them. A UK photocard licence is valid for thirty days. Beyond the rules, the conditions are the thing: the weather changes fast, distances between towns are far greater than the map suggests, SOME MAIN ROUTES ARE GRAVEL OR DIRT, and some roads and bridges are SINGLE LANE WITH PASSING AREAS. Highland and interior F-roads need four wheel drive, open only for a short part of the summer, and where they cross rivers the instruction is to DRIVE AT FIVE TO TEN KILOMETRES AN HOUR and to understand that RIVER LEVELS CAN CHANGE WITHIN THE SAME DAY. Check the Icelandic Road Administration before every driving day rather than once at the start of the trip.
The Skaftafell Packing List
A glacier walk in a harness, a steep waterfall path, an ice cave in winter, and weather that changes while you are on the trail.
Our merino base layers are 100% Australian merino at 17.5 micron, and a long sleeve merino wool base layer for women is the first layer the glacier guides will effectively require of you, whether or not they say so. On the ice you alternate between hard walking in crampons and standing still while the guide checks a route, often with wind coming off the ice cap, and wool is the fibre that handles that cycle: it keeps insulating when damp and does not chill you at the stops. A heavyweight merino base layer is the right weight for the ice caves and for any winter trip, and a merino base layer bottom is worth packing and is unlinked here to stay inside our six link limit.
Over it, a fleece and then a Marmot PreCip Eco rain jacket. Operators will usually turn you away from a glacier walk without a waterproof shell, because weather on the ice is not optional to dress for. Waterproof overtrousers are genuinely required rather than advisable and are unlinked for the same cap reason: borrow or buy a pair, do not improvise.
Merrell Moab 3 waterproof hiking boots with Darn Tough merino hiking socks. THE BOOT REQUIREMENT HERE IS SPECIFIC AND IT CATCHES PEOPLE OUT: glacier operators require a stiff, ankle-height, waterproof boot because crampons will not fit anything softer, and they rent boots at the meeting point to everyone who arrives in trainers. Arriving in your own boots that you have walked in is better than a rental on a five hour walk.
A merino beanie and merino glove liners, with warmer gloves over them in winter. Hands are the first thing to go on the ice, and a liner you can keep on while handling a carabiner or a camera is worth more than one thick pair.
Not linked, and worth having: TREKKING POLES for the Svartifoss path and the moraine, where the only entry in our range has a contested product identity; a NECK GAITER, same reason; microspikes for the icy car park and paths in winter, which the guides do not supply because their crampons are for the ice itself; sunglasses, because glare off a glacier on a bright day is severe; an insulated bottle; and a headlamp for the short winter days and the caves.
Recommended Tours and Experiences
Essential Resources for Women at Skaftafell
Emergency numbers: 112 reaches police, ambulance, fire and mountain and sea rescue from any phone including a locked mobile, and English is spoken. Download the 112 Iceland app before you travel: it sends your GPS position to the emergency services with one button and logs your location periodically so you can be found, which is the single most useful free thing a visitor to Iceland can do. For non-urgent medical advice the health service line is 1700.
Do not walk onto the glacier without a guide. Crevasses are bridged by snow and invisible from above, and moulins are vertical meltwater shafts. Guided walks supply crampons, harness, helmet and axe, and require a stiff ankle-height waterproof boot, with rentals at the meeting point. Do not climb on stranded ice in the meltwater lagoon or stand between the water and the ice face, which calves without warning. Natural ice caves exist roughly November to March only and change location every year. Trail conditions from the park and the visitor centre; road and weather at road.is and vedur.is.
US State Department travel advisory: the Iceland advisory. Read the current level there directly rather than relying on a figure printed in any guide.
UK FCDO travel advice: gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/iceland, and read the safety and security page rather than only the landing page, because that is where the substance sits.
Main hospital: there is no hospital at Skaftafell. The nearest health centre is at Kirkjubaejarklaustur, about an hour west, the nearest hospital is in Hofn, roughly an hour and a half east, and the national referral centre is Landspitali in Reykjavik, four to five hours away. A crevasse fall or a climbing injury here is a helicopter case and the park is used to that. A UK Global Health Insurance Card or an EU European Health Insurance Card gives you state-provided medically necessary care in Iceland on the same terms as a resident, which is not the same as free: Iceland charges patient co-payments for primary care and outpatient visits, so expect to pay something and keep the receipts. Travel insurance still matters and matters more here than in most of Europe, because the FCDO notes that EMERGENCY MEDICAL ASSISTANCE AND SEARCH AND RESCUE MAY BE LIMITED IN SOME AREAS and because an evacuation from a remote part of the country is expensive. Tap water is among the best in the world and buying bottled is pointless; the hot tap smells of sulphur because it is geothermal, which is harmless. Pharmacies are apotek.
Official health authority: the Directorate of Health of Iceland, covers the rural health centre network on the south east coast
US Embassy: the United States Embassy in Reykjavik.
Official tourism authority: the Icelandic Tourist Board, publishes trail status and glacier conditions for the national park
Takeaways
Walk to Skaftafellsjokull even if you do nothing else. Forty five minutes each way, flat, free, and the retreat markers along the path are the thing you will remember.
Book the glacier walk and arrive in your own stiff boots. Crampons will not fit soft footwear and the rentals are fine for two hours and tiring for five.
Come in winter for the natural ice caves, which exist only from about November to March and are in a different place every year.
Give Skaftafell a full day. It is the one south coast stop that is a destination rather than a photograph.
Solo women safety assessment: Skaftafell is among the safest places in Europe for a woman travelling alone, and the one real danger here has nothing to do with other people. Iceland has one of the lowest violent crime rates in the world, the national park is staffed, the campsite and visitor centre are busy and ordinary, English is universal, and solo hikers and solo glacier-walk bookings are completely routine. The FCDO's Iceland page carries no crime warning of substance and names environmental accidents instead, pointing at SafeTravel.is. THE HARD RULE IS THAT YOU DO NOT WALK ONTO THE ICE WITHOUT A GUIDE. An outlet glacier is moving, it is riddled with crevasses bridged by snow and invisible from above, and it has moulins, vertical meltwater shafts that go down a long way. From the edge of the lagoon the surface looks walkable and it is not, and people have died proving it. The guided walks exist because reading that ground is a skill, and the crampons, harness, helmet and axe they issue are the minimum rather than a precaution; they also require a stiff ankle-height waterproof boot. Second, the meltwater lagoon at the glacier's foot: the ice calves into it without warning, the water is a degree or two above freezing and the shore is loose gravel, so do not climb stranded ice blocks or stand between the water and the face. Third, ordinary mountain exposure on the marked trails, where the weather turns within the hour and the upper paths have no shelter. The drive is the remaining risk, with the ring road east of Vik closing in winter storms and hire car insurance generally excluding sand and ash damage.
Reading On
Skaftafell sits between the south coast stops and the glacier lagoon. The Jokulsarlon packing list covers the lagoon an hour east, which is fed by the same ice cap, and the Hofn packing list covers the town beyond it. West of here the Reynisfjara packing list and the Skogafoss packing list cover the black sand beach and the waterfall on the same road, and the Landmannalaugar packing list covers the highlands inland. The Reykjavik packing list covers the city. For the country as a whole the Iceland travel guide for women and the Iceland packing list carry the transport, the weather and the practical material in full. For why wool is the layer to wear when you alternate between hard walking and standing still on ice, read the guide to merino wool base layers for women. Every destination we cover is indexed at the travel packing guide for women, and the base layers are at the Roman Trail collection.
If the outer journey is calling you, the inner one usually is too. Explore SoulMap at romantrail.com/blogs/soulmap.
