Vatnajökull National Park

I visited this WHS in 2022. I spent 3 nights in the area between Skaftafell and Jokulsarlon, 1 of which in my rental car parked near the Jokulsarlon bridge as all hotels in the area were fully booked.

The Vatnajokull National Park is characterised by diversity on all fronts, be it landscape, biosphere, geology or service levels. To simplify matters, however, it may be placed into two categories: uninhabited highland area with limited services (requiring 4WD vehicles and/or expensive guided tours or adventure tours such as dogsledding, motoski tours, glacier walks or ice cave exploration), and lowland areas with higher service levels. I focused on the latter which are easily accessible from the ring road, namely Skaftafell with 2 easy/medium signposted hikes to Svartifoss waterfall and a turf house which is not part of the tentative WHS list and another one which leads close to the Skaftafell glacier; Jokulsarlon; and Fjallsarlon. On the way to Skaftafell (outside the NP area), I really enjoyed exploring some scenic lowland parts of the Katla UNESCO Global Geopark (great for birdwatching especially without a 4WD car) and the lava field of Eldhraun totally covered with deep moss and a short path to see a little bit of it without damaging the rest. 

The park's five visitor centres are all located in lowland areas. Each of them has an exhibition about the park's nature and cultural heritage, with park rangers and volunteers offering information and interpretative walks or programs. Parking areas …

We visited the very edge of Vatnajökull National Park in the summer of 2013 during our lap of the Iceland ring road. We arrived at the Jökulsarlon Ice Lagoon early in the morning driving from Hofn, after accidentally flirting with danger on the infamous Road 939 in our rickety Toyota Yaris the evening before.

We had booked a 1 hour rib boat tour, but unfortunately when we arrived, a deep fog had descended. This meant we couldn’t see the glacial lake and that the tour couldn’t go up to the glacier edge, but it did add an ethereal mystical quality to floating among the multicoloured or even clear icebergs (our first such experience).

The boats went every 30-60 minutes, although I note the price has almost doubled in the near-decade since our trip. The experience may be more worthwhile for the glacier-novice than the glacier-enthusiast.

Afterwards, we drove past the Fjallsarlon Lagoon on our way to Vik, where we snapped a photo that, subsequently, we had blown up and now is pride of place in our living room. I’m not sure a glacier can be good-looking, but the beauty of the glacier overspilling here has an pleasingly almost-symmetrical quality to it that, in my view, tops the various other glaciers we have seen on our travels.

We visited but a fraction of the site, so it is debatable whether one could even comment on its universal value, but the whole park’s uniqueness seems unquestionable. On a …

This is a marvelous park! The national park is the largest in Europe and it’s mostly covered by the second largest glacier in Europe. What is the best way to visit such a huge park, with such a harsh nature of fire and ice? As a normal visitor its only possible to scratch at the edges.

The best way to visit is with your own car along the ring road nr 1 as we did. The plan was to first visit Skaftafell area which is supposed to be the best place to go hiking and it is easy accessible. Then on an impulse, after a morning visit to the canyon Fjadrarglufjur, we decided to drive to the Laki area. Laki is a volcanic fissure in the western part of the national park not covered with ice. The drive was an adventure itself. You will need a 4x4 vehicle. The road is a rough one, 45 km and includes several river crossings. Our rental was a Nissan Qashqai and it (barely) did the job. We stopped to see Fagrifoss, a beautiful waterfall. The scenery and nature along the route is really different from what we are familiar with. It’s a variation of lava and rocks, but still colorful. At the parking lot next to the mountain Laki a park ranger met us, a nice surprise. He gave us information about the national park, Laki area and “rules” for driving on islandic gravel roads. Inside the national park there is circle …

Vatnajökull National Park only exists since 2008 and therefore the areas included may not be commonly known under this name. However, it is one of the most deserving WHS that have been added in the past 10 years. Its IUCN evaluation upon inscription was full of superlatives and the site comes across as highly unique. The park covers a complex interplay of a large ice sheet with the largest glacier in continental Europe, moving tectonic plates and ten volcanoes. So far on this website it has achieved a very high 4.36 out of 5 rating from 28 voters.

I started my visit at Skaftafell, the park's westernmost visitor center. I got there at about 3 pm and was surprised by the crowds. There is a very large parking lot for what really only is a starting point of a few hikes. The shortest and most popular hike is the one to Svartifoss - the "black waterfall" surrounded by columns of black basalt. It is only half an hour's walk, steeply uphill. I didn't like it much, neither the walk nor was I impressed by the waterfall itself.

I found a more pleasant short hike behind my hotel, Hotel Skaftafell. Here you walk on a path through the bushes to yet another glacier tongue. Apparently so few visitors come here that the birds jumped in panic when I walked past ‘their’ bushes. The walk ends at a small lake, from where you can continue to one of the trails …

The Vatnajökull National Park area is a bit unusual, as it includes the Jökulsargljufur National Park, which has no borders to the rest of the park, creating a second location for the site. Having just visited this exclave, I can highly recommend it. It features some of the most spectacular scenery in a country overflowing with great landscapes. The glacier-fed river Jökulsa a Fjöllum (which orginates a long way down south in the main park area) is cutting through a landscape formed by raw volcanic rock. It creates a large canyon and tumbles down a series of waterfalls, including the mighty Dettifoss waterfall. It's a gripping display of raw elementary powers, with hardly any plant life or greenery in sight. Getting there is not too tough if you have a car, although the east side road is a bit rough (though probably a bit more rewarding). No 4x4 is needed, at least in summer. However, getting there as a day trip from Reykyavik is definitely out of the question. Most people do it as part of an Iceland round trip on the ring road 1, where the 2-3 hour detour is certainly worth it. Visiting in early autumn, there was no lack of tourists, but the large scale landscape could cope with it pretty well. Further north lies the Asbyrgi canyon, which is more fertile but less spectacular, but still highly enjoyable.
For the Skaftafell section in the south, I had good luck with the Jökulsarlon glacier lagoon, as there …

When we booked a late-availability and heavily discounted expedition cruise from Scotland to Greenland in June 2010 it included a number of organised "tourist" side trips in the Faeroes and Iceland. Argo's review below, and with it the realisation that we may soon gain an extra "visit tick" from the potential inscription of Vatnajokull NP, have led me to re-evaluate our visit there. It turns out that 2 of the Icelandic trips did indeed go inside the current boundaries of Vatnajokull NP - first, a self-drive snowmobile ride up on the glacier and second, a boat trip on (Lake) Jökulsárlón (Here is a map of the 2017 NP extension which brought the southern part of Jökulsárlón and Highway 1 which goes past it, “inside” the NP and hence “inside” the nominated area).

I accept that we normally tend to be too “penny pinching” for our own good when travelling! This particularly applies for what might be termed “optional costs” such as commercially run tours. So, “HOW MUCH!!??” is our usual first response when discovering their cost - probably followed by us walking away, having decided that it just wouldn’t be worth it (we don’t normally “enjoy” the group aspect of organised tours anyway)! I have just checked the current price of a similar snowmobile trip to ours - this is c EUR 200/£178 per person for 3 hours including a drive up from Highway 1 and back, kitting/de-kitting time etc – so only 1 hour out on the ice. …

Having read that Iceland would propose this site for 2019, I crossed check the detailed map of the nomination file (that can be downloaded from the National Park website) with my notes and pictures from our June 2008 trip to Iceland.

To be fair this tentative site is probably best visited if you go there for trekking, and this is not what we did at that time, however we went to some easily accessible parts of the nominated area. There is only one road which goes (on a short section) through this area, that is road number 1, which is also the only road going around the island. We stopped at the place called Jokulsarlon. This is a lake created by melting ice from the glacier, directly connected to the beach and sea by a short stream. There were few visitors on that day, and the dark clouds, low light, white and blue ices with the glacier in the background created a very special and impressive atmosphere we will never forget.

Following road number one to Reikjavik, we also stopped at two more places (Skaftafell and Svinafellsokull) where ice tongues from the Vatnajokul glacier can be seen from very close. For this, you must exit the main road and drive for a few minutes on dust roads (accessible with our basic rental car). Staying safe on the path we walked along the ice, and again these were memorable experiences. Glacier was huge and could be seen from very close. It …