Iceland Northern Lights Tour: Small Group, Hot Chocolate & Photos

4.69

(1958 reviews)

What’s the experience like?

I didn’t expect the city lights to vanish so quickly once we left Reykjavik — one minute there’s traffic, then suddenly it’s just black fields and the bus headlights bouncing off snow. Our guide, Ásgeir, kept checking some weather app I couldn’t make sense of (he called it his “aurora radar”), and honestly I was glad he knew what he was doing. The minibus was quiet except for someone unwrapping a pastry behind me. I remember thinking: this could be a long night if the northern lights don’t show up. But that’s kind of the deal with any northern lights tour in Iceland, right?

We stopped somewhere that felt like nowhere — just wind and crunchy gravel underfoot. Ásgeir handed out thick wool blankets (Icelandic ones — scratchy but warm) and poured us hot chocolate from a thermos that steamed up my glasses. He told stories about elves hiding in rocks while we waited, which made the dark seem less empty somehow. At one point, another minibus pulled up and two guides started chatting in Icelandic about “green bands” on the forecast. It felt like everyone out there was rooting for the sky to do something wild.

When the aurora finally flickered in — pale at first, then stretching across half the sky — nobody said much. It wasn’t loud or dramatic; just this slow, shifting green that made even our guide go quiet for a minute. Ásgeir took photos of us standing awkwardly under the lights (I still laugh at my frozen smile), promising to email them later. The air smelled sharp and cold; my toes went numb but I didn’t really care by then. And if you don’t see anything? They let you come back for free, which is fair enough because you can’t really schedule magic.