Vik i Myrdal is a village of about 750 people on Iceland's south coast, roughly 180 kilometres from Reykjavik, and it is the only settlement of any size on a 200 kilometre stretch of coast. That is the fact that decides everything about it: Vik is where the fuel, the food, the pharmacy, the hotel beds and the only supermarket for a long way in either direction are.
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It is also the wettest inhabited place in Iceland, with roughly 2,250 millimetres of rain a year against Reykjavik's 800. The weather here is not an occasional inconvenience, it is the main condition.
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What Is Here
Vikurkirkja, the church, sits on a hill above the village and is the postcard: a small red-roofed white church with the Reynisdrangar sea stacks behind it. It is a five minute walk up from the main street and the view is the whole coast. It is also the village's designated evacuation point for a Katla eruption, which is signposted.
The Reynisdrangar are three basalt stacks standing offshore, up to 66 metres, visible from the village beach and from the church. Icelandic folklore makes them trolls caught by the sunrise while dragging a ship ashore.
Reynisfjara is the black sand beach on the far side of the Reynisfjall headland, ten minutes by car and the reason most visitors are here at all. It has basalt columns, a cave and the most dangerous water on the Icelandic coast. We cover it in full in its own guide.
Dyrholaey is the promontory a few kilometres west, with a natural arch the sea has cut through it, a lighthouse and a viewpoint over black beach in both directions. The upper road closes in high wind and the whole reserve closes for puffin nesting between roughly mid May and late June, with the dates published annually and enforced.
Myrdalsjokull sits inland and Katla is the volcano beneath it, one of Iceland's most closely watched. Glacier trips onto Myrdalsjokull and into the Katla ice cave run from Vik. The village is in Katla's flood path and has a working evacuation plan; the sirens are tested and the plan is on the wall of the visitor centre.
There is an outlet of the Icewear factory shop in the village, a swimming pool, a pharmacy counter and the N1 fuel station, which matters more than it sounds: the next fuel east is Kirkjubaejarklaustur, 70 kilometres away.
When to Go
June to August gives long light, open roads, puffins on Dyrholaey after the closure lifts and the glacier trips running. It is also when every Golden Circle extension and south coast coach stops here.
September and October are very good: thinner crowds, roads still open, and aurora over the stacks from late September, which is the frame in this post's second image.
Winter, November to March, is when Vik is at its most striking and its most likely to trap you. Route 1 closes in weather, and when it does Vik is where you stay, which is the honest argument for booking a bed here rather than day-tripping from Reykjavik in winter.
April and May are quiet and unreliable, with the Dyrholaey nesting closure covering part of the window. Check road.is and vedur.is before every leg, not just before the trip.
Getting There
By car, Route 1 east from Reykjavik, about two and a half hours in good conditions and considerably more in winter. This is the easiest leg of the ring road to misjudge, because it is fast, flat and exposed.
By bus, the Straeto service 51 runs Reykjavik to Vik and onward, which makes Vik one of the few south coast stops reachable without a car. It will not get you to Reynisfjara or Dyrholaey.
By organised tour, every south coast day trip from Reykjavik stops here, usually for lunch and usually for under an hour.
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 Vik Safe for Women?
The village itself is as safe as anywhere in Iceland. The beaches ten minutes away have killed visitors and that is not a figure of speech. 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.
Reynisfjara's sneaker waves are the single most serious visitor hazard on this coast and there have been multiple deaths. The mechanism matters because it is counter-intuitive: the beach shelves steeply into open Atlantic with nothing between here and Antarctica, so a wave periodically runs tens of metres further up the sand than the ones before it, without looking like a large wave coming in. People are caught while photographing, while walking at the water's edge, and while retreating too slowly in loose black sand. A warning light system now operates at the car park. Never turn your back on the sea, stay well above the HIGHEST wet line rather than the current one, and treat a calm-looking sea as the condition in which this happens.
The wind here is strong enough to be a vehicle hazard. Icelandic gusts on this coast take car doors off their hinges, which hire car insurance does not cover, and the Dyrholaey upper road closes because of it. Park facing into the wind and open doors with a hand on them.
Katla is monitored and Vik has a plan. You do not need to worry about it, you need to know that the church is the evacuation point and that the sirens mean go uphill immediately rather than go and look.
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 Vik Packing List
The wettest place in Iceland, with black sand that gets into everything and wind that does not stop.
Our merino base layers are 100% Australian merino at 17.5 micron, and a long sleeve merino wool base layer for women is the layer to build this trip on, because the pattern here is wet, windy and repeatedly in and out of a car. Wool keeps working damp, which on a coast with 2,250 millimetres of annual rain is the property that matters rather than a nicety. A heavyweight merino base layer from October.
Over it, a Marmot PreCip Eco rain jacket with a hood that cinches, and genuinely waterproof overtrousers, because horizontal rain here reaches your legs first. In winter add an insulated jacket in between.
Merrell Moab 3 waterproof hiking boots with Darn Tough merino socks. Black sand is abrasive and gets inside low shoes within a minute, and the Dyrholaey paths are wet grass and loose rock.
Kahtoola MICROspikes from November to March for the church hill and the car parks.
Not linked and worth packing: a DRY BAG for the camera, which on this coast is not optional, as spray reaches the Reynisfjara viewpoints; a NECK GAITER, where the only entry in our range has a contested product identity; a hat and gloves in any month; and a SPARE PAIR OF SOCKS IN THE CAR, because wet feet are the thing that ends a south coast day early.
Recommended Tours and Experiences
Essential Resources for Women in Vik
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.
Reynisfjara's sneaker waves have killed visitors: never turn your back on the sea, stay well above the HIGHEST wet line rather than the current one, and understand that a calm-looking sea is the condition in which this happens. A warning light system operates at its car park. The Dyrholaey reserve closes for puffin nesting from roughly mid May to late June and its upper road closes in high wind. Vik is Katla's evacuation village and the church on the hill is the designated assembly point. The N1 here is the only fuel for 70 kilometres east. Route 1 closes in weather, with closures at road.is and forecasts at 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 in Vik. The health centre on Vikurbraut handles routine matters and a pharmacy counter operates in the village; the nearest hospitals are at Selfoss, about an hour and a half west, and Landspitali in Reykjavik, the national referral centre, about two and a half hours away. 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 Vik health centre and the regional network
US Embassy: the United States Embassy in Reykjavik.
Official tourism authority: the Icelandic Tourist Board, publishes the Dyrholaey nesting closure dates and the south coast road status
Takeaways
Sleep here in winter. When Route 1 shuts, Vik is where you wanted to already be.
Respect Reynisfjara absolutely. Multiple deaths, a warning light system, and the sea does not look dangerous beforehand.
Fill the tank. Next fuel east is 70 kilometres.
Check the Dyrholaey closure. Mid May to late June the reserve is shut for nesting birds.
Solo women safety assessment: Vik is an extremely safe village beside genuinely dangerous water, and holding both of those at once is the whole of the honest advice. Iceland has one of the lowest violent crime rates in the world, the village is tiny and ordinary, English is universal, the bus from Reykjavik makes it one of the few south coast stops reachable without a car, and a woman travelling here alone is unremarkable. The FCDO's Iceland page names no crime risk of substance and points at environmental accidents instead, naming SafeTravel.is. THE FIRST AND MOST SERIOUS HAZARD IS REYNISFJARA, ten minutes away, where sneaker waves have killed visitors. The mechanism is counter-intuitive and that is exactly why it catches people: the beach shelves steeply into open Atlantic, so a wave periodically runs tens of metres further up the sand than the ones before it WITHOUT looking like a large wave on its way in, and people are caught photographing, walking at the water's edge, or retreating too slowly through loose black sand. A warning light system now operates at the car park. Never turn your back on the water, stay above the HIGHEST wet line rather than the current one, and read a calm sea as the condition of the accident rather than the absence of one. THE SECOND IS WIND, which on this coast is strong enough to take a car door off its hinges, a loss hire insurance does not cover, and which closes the Dyrholaey upper road. THE THIRD IS THE ROAD ITSELF: Route 1 here is fast, flat, exposed and the easiest Icelandic leg to misjudge, and it closes, so check road.is in both directions. KATLA, under the glacier inland, is monitored rather than imminent, and what a visitor needs to know is that the church is the evacuation point and that a siren means go uphill at once.
Reading On
Vik is the base for the south coast and most of what you drive here for is live in this library. The Reynisfjara packing list covers the black beach ten minutes away in full, and the Skogafoss packing list covers the waterfall on the way out from town, with the Landmannalaugar packing list for the highlands inland. East, the Skaftafell packing list and Jokulsarlon packing list carry the glacier and the lagoon. Inland the Thingvellir packing list and Gullfoss packing list cover the Golden Circle, with the Reykjavik packing list for the capital. 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 in the wettest place in Iceland, 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.
