East Iceland rewards two nights, and Seyðisfjörður is where to spend them
Seyðisfjörður's rainbow street, the basalt columns at Stuðlagil and puffins at Borgarfjörður Eystri — how to fit the east into a Ring Road trip.
The east is the part of the Ring Road people drive through on the way to somewhere else. Egilsstaðir is the junction town: petrol, a supermarket, the airport. The good things are off the main road, each in a different direction, and none of them is a quick stop. Give it two nights or don’t bother.
Seyðisfjörður
Over the Fjarðarheiði pass from Egilsstaðir: 27 km and about half an hour when the pass is open, which in winter is not every day. The town is a row of timber houses shipped in kit form from Norway a century ago, at the head of a long fjord, with the blue church at the end of a street painted in rainbow stripes. The Smyril Line ferry from Denmark docks here in summer. Gufufoss is the waterfall you pass on the way down into town. Sleep here rather than in Egilsstaðir; it’s the same distance from everything and a better place to wake up.
Downside: the pass. A tunnel is planned but not built. Check road status before you commit to a morning tour.
Stuðlagil
The canyon of basalt columns in Jökuldalur, about an hour and a quarter west of Egilsstaðir. The columns were underwater until the Kárahnjúkar dam cut the river’s flow in 2009; the blue-green colour comes and goes with the season and the glacier melt. From Seyðisfjörður, BusTravel Iceland run Stuðlagil Canyon from Seyðisfjörður, €192, five hours, all year. That’s a lot for five hours, but the alternative is a rental car and the long walk from the Klaustursel side to get down among the columns. The west-bank viewpoint is a short walk from a car park and looks across at them, which for most people is enough.
Downside: in high summer the east-bank path is busy, and in spring the river can run brown and high enough to hide the columns.
Puffins at Borgarfjörður Eystri
Hafnarhólmi, the small harbour at Borgarfjörður Eystri, has a puffin colony you watch from a wooden platform a few metres above the burrows. No boat, no long lens. The birds are on land roughly from late April to mid-August; June and July are the safe months. The road from Egilsstaðir is about 70 km, the last stretch over a pass. BusTravel’s Puffin Tour from Seyðisfjörður, €192, five hours, summer only, is the bookable option. Check the tour page for the exact colony it visits; if it’s Hafnarhólmi, book it.
If you’re doing it all by tour
Arctic Adventures’ 6 Day Around Iceland Adventure at €1,988 is the one multi-day tour on our list that includes the east. Six days round the whole island means the east gets a day, not two. It’s the right choice if you’re not driving and want to see everything once. It’s the wrong one if the east is why you came.
Our honest take
Drive. Sleep two nights in Seyðisfjörður. Day one: Stuðlagil on the way in from the west. Day two: Borgarfjörður Eystri for the puffins if it’s June or July, otherwise the fjord itself. Book the €192 tours only if you’re carless; they’re priced for people arriving by ship. The tradeoff is that the east adds two days to a Ring Road trip most people already think is too short. It is. Add them anyway.
