Iceland's Classic Northern Lights

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Iceland's Classic Northern Lights

• Guide works in English
• Duration per the operator: 5 days

from $2085

See dates, price and what is included at the operator

Five days of guided winter travel from Reykjavik

This tour takes you out of Reykjavik for five days in search of the northern lights, with the capital as both your start and end point. Intrepid Travel runs it as a fully guided trip in English, which means you travel with a leader who handles the logistics and the nightly aurora hunt. The itinerary is built around the classic winter circuit: you move between countryside hotels and guesthouses, spending the dark hours in places away from city lights where the aurora has a chance to show. At 2,085 USD per person, it sits in the middle of the price range for five and six day packages in Iceland, cheaper than the 5-Day Laugavegur Trek in Huts at 2,962 USD and the Iceland Northern Lights tour at 2,770 USD, but more than the Land of the Northern Lights option at 1,645 USD. The tour is designed for travellers who want the structure of a small group and a guide making the calls on where to go each night, rather than renting a car and chasing clear skies on their own.

Photographs from the operator Intrepid Travel. They show the listing, not your day.

What the price covers and what it does not

The 2,085 USD entry price buys you five days of fully guided travel with an English-speaking leader and all your food along the way. Meals are explicitly part of the package, which removes the usual guesswork about dinner stops in small Icelandic towns where options can be thin. Accommodation for the four nights is included as well, as is transport between the places on the itinerary. The operator does not sell any extras on top of this base price. No optional add-ons are listed for the tour, so what you see in the entry price is the full cost of the travel itself. You will need to cover your own way to Reykjavik and any nights you spend there before or after the tour, since the five days begin and end in the city. There is no free cancellation on this booking, which is worth noting because most tours in this category do offer it. If your plans might change, you should factor that into your decision before committing.

A tour without a track record yet

This tour has no customer ratings on record. That is the honest way to read it: not that the tour is bad, but that there is no accumulated evidence from past travellers to judge it by. In a category of 62 five and six day packages, it ranks 27th when listings are ordered by the strength of their evidence, which puts it below tours that have dozens of verified reviews behind them. The comparable tours in this group all carry ratings: the 5-Day Laugavegur Trek in Huts and the Iceland Northern Lights tour both sit at 4.7 from 14 ratings, Northern Lights Escape at 4.6 from 51, and Land of the Northern Lights at 4.4 from 183. Against those, this tour is an unknown quantity. The lack of ratings does not make it a worse choice, but it does mean you are booking on the strength of Intrepid Travel's reputation and the itinerary itself rather than on the experiences of previous customers.

Winter months and long dark hours

The northern lights season in Iceland runs through the months when the nights are long enough for the aurora to be visible, which in Reykjavik means roughly September through April. The temperatures on the climate chart above show what that means in practice. January and February are the coldest months, with highs around 3 degrees and lows of minus 2, while December is similar. March edges up to 4 degrees and April to 7, with May reaching 10 degrees but the nights becoming too short and bright for reliable aurora viewing. The tour is five days long, so you are not committing to a full winter of cold; you are spending less than a week in it. The dark hours are what matter for the lights. In midwinter the sun sets early and rises late, giving you a long window each night for the guide to find clear skies. By late March and April the window shortens, but the aurora can still appear once full darkness falls. The time of day to be awake is the late evening and the small hours, which is when the guide will be watching the forecast and the sky.

What the evenings look like on the road

Each night of the tour is a weather-dependent operation. The guide watches the cloud cover and the aurora forecast and decides where to stop or whether to keep driving to find a break in the clouds. That means the plan can change at short notice, and some nights may end with no lights at all if the sky stays overcast. The places you stay are chosen to be away from the glow of Reykjavik, so even a short walk from your accommodation can put you under a darker sky. The guide is the one making the call on when to go out and when to call it a night, and turning back early when conditions are wrong is part of the job. You should dress for standing outside in freezing temperatures for an hour or more at a time, since the lights do not perform on a schedule. The tour runs through the winter months when roads can close and weather can delay travel, so the itinerary has some flexibility built into it. Your leader will adjust the route as conditions demand, and the priority is getting you to a place where the aurora has a real chance of appearing.

Who should book this tour

This tour suits travellers who want the northern lights handled for them: a guide making the nightly decisions, meals organised, transport sorted, and no need to rent a car for winter driving. It is a good fit for a first visit to Iceland in winter, when the conditions can be challenging for independent travel. The fully guided format in English also works well for solo travellers who want company and structure. It is not the tour for you if you want to set your own pace or if you prefer to chase the lights in your own vehicle. If you want a longer stay, Northern Lights Escape runs for six days at 2,265 USD, giving you an extra day for the same kind of itinerary. If you are set on five days but want a cheaper option, Land of the Northern Lights comes in at 1,645 USD, though it has a lower rating at 4.4 from 183 reviews. The lack of free cancellation on this tour is another point to weigh if your travel dates are not fixed.

TOURRADAR

Iceland's Classic Northern Lights

Dates, remaining places and the current version of what is included are at the operator. This page reflects the state of the catalogue, not the state of this morning.

from $2085

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