Northern lights with kids: which tour works

Pick a short tour, a small vehicle and a retry ticket. The Elding cruise at about €106 is two hours and takes children of any age in its child category. For a four-hour night in a minibus, Arctic Adventures starts at age 6 and Kalman Tours lists children from age 1. A private family tour is about €1,027, and only worth it for a group of four or more.

Nobody can promise the lights. That is the first thing to tell your children.

Why it is harder with children

The tours run late. Most leave between 20:30 and 22:00 and last two to four hours, because aurora needs dark skies, and a bus with a tired six-year-old is a long evening. The cold is the second problem. Waiting by a roadside at -5°C is fine for adults in thermal gear and miserable for a child in school boots.

Plan the day around it. A late afternoon nap helps. So does a hot meal before pickup, and an early night after.

The boat — shortest and easiest

The Reykjavík Northern Lights Cruise from Elding (about €106, two hours, no pickup) leaves from the Old Harbour. The child category is 0 to 6, and a youth category covers 7 to 15. You are on deck, and you are back in town within two hours.

The downside: the lights over a bright harbour are fainter than the ones you would see from a dark field. Cloud ends the evening, and the boat is the tour most affected by a rough sea. Some children get seasick, so ask yourself whether yours does.

The minibus — the standard option

The Magical Auroras minibus tour from Arctic Adventures (about €95, four hours) has a minimum age of 6. Children aged 6 to 12 are booked as children. A small vehicle means fewer stops and shorter walks to the viewing spot. The four hours includes a lot of driving, so check how your child copes with car journeys.

The small-group tour from Kalman Tours (about €102, four hours) lists a minimum age of 1, so it is one of the few that take babies and toddlers. A very young child on a four-hour night is a decision for the parents, not the operator. Think hard before you do it.

David the Guide’s Spirit of the Aurora (about €110, five hours) lists children from 0 to 10 in its child category. Five hours is long. We would pick one of the four-hour tours first.

The private family tour — the comfortable one

The Taste Iceland family tour (about €1,027 for the vehicle, three and a half hours) is built for children. It offers hot chocolate and donuts, frequent warm-up breaks, flexible timing and a guide who tells the stories at child level. There are no strangers and no rush. It is priced per vehicle, so the cost is split across the whole family.

That price is high. For a family of five it works out around €205 each, roughly double the minibus. For a couple with one child it is hard to justify.

What to pack

• Thermal layers for every child, plus a spare pair of mittens.
• Winter boots, not trainers.
• A snack and a hot drink in a flask.
• A fully charged phone for the photos, with the brightness down.

If you do not own the clothes, hire them. Our guide to clothing rental in Iceland covers children’s sizes.

Our honest take

For a family with a child under 6, take the Elding boat. It is two hours, it is warm below deck, and a child who falls asleep is not a disaster. For children over 6, the Arctic Adventures minibus at about €95 is the best value, and its minimum age matches the evening’s demands.

Skip the private tour unless there are four or more of you, or a child with special needs. Whichever you pick, book it for the first few nights of your trip so that a cloudy evening can be retried.