SCANDINAVIA NORTH ICELAND DESTINATIONS Snow


Want to avoid Reykjavik’s crowds? Head to north Iceland, says Joanna Booth


U


ntil I visited north Iceland, I didn’t fully appreciate the


range of sounds snow can make. There’s the shushing of a sled cleaving through powder, pulled by a team of dogs. There’s the satisfying scrunch as your snowshoe sinks deep into a drift. There’s the rhythmic whump of a horse’s hooves compacting the fluffy stuff beneath your combined weight. And then there’s the almost imperceptible fizzle of flakes falling into a hot tub as you sit and soak.


w THE QUIET NORTH There’s nothing particularly unique about north Iceland’s snow, although there is an abundance of the lovely, powdery stuff during the winter. What is special is the silence that allows you to appreciate its tuneful tonality to the full. Tourism in Iceland has been a major success story. Greater awareness, lower prices and an increase in airlift have seen travellers flock here. The annual number of overseas visitors has


lonely


more than quadrupled over the past six years. The only downside has been overcrowding, with sometimes overwhelming numbers rushing to the famous southern hot spots of Reykjavik, the Golden Circle and the Blue Lagoon. Here in the north, it’s all rather


different. Although tourists and operators – including Super Break, which launched winter charter trips here last season – are wising up to its charms, it’s still beautifully quiet. From friendly,


pint-sized Akureyri, where – unlike Reykjavik – the bars are full of locals, to the titanic wilderness that surrounds it, this is Iceland without the crowds. These epic landscapes feel


even more monumental when you have them to yourself. I heard the legends of the first Viking settlers from the back of a surefooted Icelandic horse, and the tales seemed particularly believable with no traces of civilization in the sweeping Skagafjörður valley, other than


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PICTURE: SHUTTERSTOCK


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