Akureyri View Point

The whole of Akureyri fits into one frame from here: the town at the head of Eyjafjörður, the harbour, the Oddeyri spit and the mountains behind. This is a stop rather than a destination. You park, look, photograph and drive on.

The view works twice over. By day it is roofs, ships and the calm water of Pollurinn in front of the town. In July it still reads around midnight, because Akureyri lies less than 100 km from the Arctic Circle and the light barely goes.

• No facilities — there are no toilets and no drinking water at the viewpoint.
• Easy to miss in the dark — the pull-in is hard to spot at night. Set navigation before you drive up.
• Winter — snow cover around Akureyri forms in late October and lasts into April.
• A stop, not a stay — the view is the whole visit. Nothing else is laid on here.

The viewpoint sits beside the road, and the view opens straight from the parking area. There is nothing to walk in. An information board stands at the stop itself. By day the pull-in is obvious from the road; in the dark it is easy to drive straight past, so set navigation before the last stretch.

Best: June and July, in daylight or around midnight — the light holds through the night this far north.

Avoid: November to February, when Akureyri gets barely any sunshine.

Everything here depends on the weather, and this is a cloudy town: Akureyri averages 1,029 sunshine hours a year. Rain is another matter. Precipitation is far lower than in southern Iceland, as little as a fifth of what falls on Vík í Mýrdal.