Beyond the Ring Road: An Iceland Insider’s Guide to Avoiding the Crowds

On this episode of Unpacked, join host Aislyn Greene as she speaks with travel writer ⁠Ali Wunderman⁠, who has been exploring the country for more than a decade.

Ali shares how to connect with authentic Icelandic culture, avoid the crowds, and discover the spots that most visitors miss. From traditional lopapeysa sweaters to remote West Fjords adventures, learn how to experience Iceland like a local.

Transcript

I’m Aislyn Greene, and this week on Unpacked, we’re heading to Iceland, but not the way you might expect. Because while millions flock there every year for things like the Golden Circle and northern lights, we’re exploring how to go off the beaten track in this Nordic nation.

It’s part of a series we’re running on Afar.com and on this podcast—I’ll link to that story in the show notes. And the author of that story, and our guest today, knows Iceland better than pretty much any other travel writer.

Ali Wunderman has written for National Geographic, Vogue, and Afar. She’s also authored an Iceland guidebook, so yes, as the old saying goes, she has literally written the book on Iceland. Ali has been visiting the country for over a decade, and it all started with a solo birthday trip back in 2014, which you’ll hear about shortly.

So Ali has witnessed Iceland’s transformation from a place that was actually left off maps to a tourist hot spot. And today she’s sharing her insider knowledge on connecting with the real Iceland off the beaten path.

Aislyn: Ali, welcome to Unpacked. And I have to ask, are you wearing an Icelandic sweater right now?

Ali: Yes. So this is, I thought, why not, since we’re gonna be filming it. This is a traditional Icelandic sweater called lopapeysa. It’s made from sheep’s wool. Even though San Francisco, where I live, is not the warmest city in the world, it is still too hot for California. But it is, it’s incredible. Generally it’s made by a woman in your life, by your mom or your grandma.

They do sell them now. But when I went, they were tough to find, an authentic one not made in a factory, but made by someone. They now have a women’s cooperative where they sell them in Reykjavik, that’s amazing. They’re totally leaning into it, and they’re really, really good for Icelandic weather with the wind and the chill and the cold and how quickly it changes.

The Icelandic sheep’s wool is, it is meant for that environment. It is a perfect piece of clothing for Iceland, and I highly recommend it. And also even still Icelandic people will think you’re Icelandic if you wear one, so it’s a good way to get in.

Aislyn: Who made yours?

Ali: I actually did buy this at the collective. I don’t remember the name of the person who made it, but the other one that I had was made by my former boyfriend’s grandmother.

Aislyn: Oh, that’s so cool. So it sounds like you’ve been visiting for nearly a decade. So what took you there on that very first trip? What was that experience like? And would you say that you did the usual, like kind of first-time tourist things?

Ali: So my first visit to Iceland was 2014, so it’s actually been 11 years, a little bit over a decade. And I first went because they produced the best tourism video I’ve ever seen. The tourism board just knocked it out of the park. They had this video with an Icelandic singer, “Jungle Drum” was the song.

And it was so upbeat and so fun and it showcased all these aspects of the country. And I thought, I just need to go there. I need to see this place. And people weren’t really going there yet. It was still very hard to get to, especially from the West Coast, which is where I live. And I thought, you know, what could be better than a solo birthday trip?

So I went in September. And I just wanted to check out a place that I didn’t know anybody who had been, and I wanted to see if that video held everything to be true. So it was really fun and I’ve done solo birthday trips a lot since then. Highly recommend it, especially for women.

Aislyn: Yeah, that’s a great tip.

Ali: And as it pertains to what I did while I was there. So it was a little bit unusual for me because I didn’t want to do the regular tourist things, but there also weren’t really a ton of regular tourist things at that point. It wasn’t a heavily trafficked destination.

And I was interested in doing a lot of cultural things. I think most people are really drawn to the landscape, to the nature, to the natural phenomena, but I really wanted to participate in, in September, they have something called réttir, which they, they take the sheep from the highlands down to the farms for the winter, and they ride horses to do it.

And I’m a big horseback rider, so I wanted to herd the sheep with them. And that’s, there’s no tour that does that perhaps now, but certainly not then. But in the process of researching my trip, I actually connected with an Icelander and we began dating.

Aislyn: Oh!

Ali: So when I first got to Iceland, I had basically a local guide. I had someone to show me the off the beaten path, what Icelanders do. But my activities were, I wanted to go horseback riding, so I booked a two day riding trip in South Iceland with Eldhestar. They were amazing. My first time ever falling off a horse.

Aislyn: Oh no.

Ali: But, you know, you don’t fall very far on those horses. So it’s OK. I did end up seeing the northern lights. I got very lucky there was a solar flare. September is not usually the time for them. But they came out for my birthday. So that was a really special experience. And I didn’t do too much of, I didn’t do the Golden Circle. I didn’t go to Vík.

I didn’t do a lot of the touristy things. I did walk around Reykjavík and see everything in the 15 minutes that it takes to walk around Reykjavík. But my boyfriend at the time, he lived in Ísafjörður in the West Fjords, so I spent a bit of time up there. I really got to love that region. So it was a mix of doing touristy quote unquote things and doing my thing.

Aislyn: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it sounds like that’s the ideal situation is that you just start dating somebody who can show you immediately the best of the country.

Ali: I highly recommend it. And if you’re American, marry them. Get that EU passport.

Aislyn: I love it. Seriously, especially right now.

Ali: Yeah, exactly.

Aislyn: Well, that tourism video that took you in, was that the one that they were using to basically try to help build, rebuild the economy through tourism?

Ali: Exactly. They had the financial crisis in 2008 where their banks collapsed and Iceland said, “You’re going to jail for that.” They were the country that said, “No, you don’t get to take our money and swindle us like this.” And then they had the famous eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, which I butchered the pronunciation.

Aislyn: That was amazing. That was so good. Woo.

Ali: Iceland’s a little easier to pronounce than we think. But so they had this eruption, so they were on the world stage in a way that people were seeing them for the first time. The island is often left off of maps. It’s just forgotten about in maps of Europe. There’s no Iceland, but they’ll still have Greenland. So Iceland was excited to be getting attention, even if it wasn’t for great reasons or if it was for controversial reasons. But yes, they released this video to try to say, “Hey, we’re here. We’re a fun place to visit. We’re a friendly place to visit.” And it worked. It worked very well on me. Kudos to their marketing team for putting that together. Because it was effective.

Aislyn: It sounds like it. And now we’re sitting here 11 years later where they’re seeing maybe the downside of some of the results of that marketing.

Ali: Exactly. Yeah. They did too good of a job.

Aislyn: So going back to—thank you for answering that question—but what kept you returning, like what is it about this place that really captured your imagination?

Ali: From the first time that I landed at Keflavík [International Airport], it was, I felt like coming home. It was a strange feeling of just comfort and like I had a place there, which is it’s obviously a very beautiful place. The landscapes are stunning. The midnight sun, the aurora, you really can’t go wrong when it comes to the natural elements. And I love the birds, but really it was an alignment of values. And culturally I felt like it was a place I felt very comfortable being in.

Iceland is quirky. It’s, they have a dry, almost British sense of humor, but they’re incredibly hospitable, helpful, hardworking, funny, and adventurous people with a strong sense of family. And I happen to have a real penchant for countries or communities of about that size, of about 350 to 400,000 people.

The other place I spend the most time is Belize, also written guidebooks there. Similar population size. People always ask me, “How can you love Iceland and Belize the most?” I say, “Look at the population size.” People know each other, they take care of each other. And even if you’re a tourist, they’ll help you.

But I just found that culturally, I felt like this was a really interesting place. Loved the history, loved the emphasis on protecting and conserving nature, and I just kept wanting to go back.

Aislyn: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. When did you write your first guidebook?

Ali: Oh, that came out February 2020.

Aislyn: Oh, no. I’m sorry.

Ali: I wrote it in 2019. It launched, really, really poor timing. It came out with Fodor’s in February 2020. But you know, it happens. It’s OK.

Aislyn: Yep, yep. Yeah. I’m sure the reprints will do well or have done well.

Ali: Yeah, exactly. So that’s OK. It happens. But yeah, so that’s when I did that and the first time I wrote about Iceland would’ve been 2014, 2015, right when I went.

Aislyn: OK. Well, so you’ve had this front-row seat to the tourism industry basically growing and developing and turning into something, and then kind of maybe tipping over into the dark side a little bit. So how have you seen it change and how has the way that you travel within Iceland changed because of that?

Ali: So when I first visited Iceland, what I noticed was there was a sense of freedom. With a small community like that, there’s also, it comes with a high amount of accountability. It’s hard to get away with stuff there. People know what you’re up to. So because of that, there weren’t a lot of strict rules around tourism in place, because people would look out for each other and because you couldn’t really get away with doing something that was against the rules.

So there weren’t strict rules and enforcement. That’s changed. That’s just a natural effect of when you go from a population of 300,000, 350,000 to a million in a season, there has to be rules in place. And people don’t know the culture. They don’t know the sensitivity, the fragility of the ecosystem.

And so I feel like Iceland’s done a really incredible job of creating infrastructure that supports tourism without impacting the locals’ lives negatively. To a degree, I mean. Change is always difficult, but it’s things like when I first went, it was possible to pull over on anybody’s land anywhere, really, and camp there. Now that’s not a thing. You have to go to a campsite and pay for it. And you can sleep in a camper van, but generally now there are designated camping areas and you go to those and you pay for them. And I think that’s reasonable given the number of people visiting Iceland and on the roads there.

So I’ve obviously as those changes have happened, I’ve gone along with them and that’s just how it is. But it’s also come with a lot of positive things like roping off areas to protect wildlife, to protect moss, to protect tourists. More signs are going up and we all heard about this unfortunate incident with a young girl on Reynisfjara Beach recently.

They put up a new sign basically every year saying, “Don’t go in the water. Don’t go in the water” and in a million different languages. And you know, those weren’t there in that number. So it’s things like that that have changed.

But in terms of the way that I engage with Iceland, I would say that I probably don’t visit the most touristed sites anymore, or I don’t do it during high season. I don’t, I’m not a big fan of crowds to begin with, but also Iceland has so much to see. And Iceland has done a great job of reinforcing the places people might go to. So they’re anticipating movement from people, and I think that’s really clever. Because a lot of countries, when they see a rapid rise in tourism, they don’t know how to deal with it.

Aislyn: Well I was curious to know, so given all of that, and it’s really nice to hear that Iceland is not only kind of protecting locals, but thinking ahead. Like, “OK, we wanna spread tourism out. How are we gonna prepare for that?” So what would you recommend for a first-time visitor and especially somebody who’s like, “Oh, I kind of wanna see the iconic sites. Are there ways to do it where you don’t feel like you’re one in 750,000 travelers?” What would your advice be?

Ali: Absolutely. So I think when it comes to avoiding crowds in Iceland, timing is always important. Go during the off seasons, go during winter, and if you are, you know, a lot of people are limited by school schedules and things of that nature, try to go during the very early part of the day or the very end part of the day.

I also always recommend hiring a local guide. Local guides are gonna be the most aware of when and where crowds are and they can help you avoid them while ensuring that you see the things that you came to see. But also I think the best tip for beating crowds in Iceland is to do things that are different than what people do.

You know, most people who visit Iceland, they come back with stories about jaw-dropping ethereal landscapes, which is all very real, and hot dogs of course, and they have a really wonderful time. But the people I know who have the best time, they come back with a friendship. They come back having connected to the country on a cultural level, on a human level. And I think it’s easy to be very tempted by these amazing landscapes and experiences, but add in the human element.

And additionally, you know, try to give yourself the time. Iceland, part of the reason why they’ve achieved such success was that they really pioneered the stopover program. Icelandair said, “Hey, if you’re going to Paris, stop in Reykjavík for up to seven days on us. We’ve got you.” And so a lot of people will do two- to three- to four-day trips, and it’s a very limited amount of time.

So I would say give yourself a little more time to get out of the city, get out of the Golden Circle area and explore. So a combination of beating crowds in Iceland is just time it differently. Get to know the people there and give yourself more time to explore.

Aislyn: Which it sounds like you have done at times, like you’ve stayed there for up to a month or more.

Ali: Yeah. Even my first trip was three weeks. I really wanted to go to Iceland. And I’ve rented an apartment there, stayed there for longer periods of time. Yes, and I definitely recommend it if you have the time. The trouble with, you know, American tourism is that we only get two weeks as a standard. And so you really wanna make the most of it. And I totally understand that. I totally get that. And it’s too bad. So it’s if you can only do a day or two, make the most of it, but if you do have the means to do longer, absolutely. I’ve gotten so much out of spending extended time in Iceland.

Aislyn: Cool. Well, and in your story, you wrote about some of the places that you have spent more time in and that you would recommend for people who wanna kind of expand their horizon, so to speak. So for the second-time visitor or somebody’s going for longer, where would you recommend, where should they go?

Ali: I think there’s something special literally in every single part of the country, including Reykjavík and the South. But I have a particular love for the West Fjords, not just because my former boyfriend lives there, but of course I spent a lot of time exploring it and I go back there every time I’m in Iceland and it’s not super easy to get to.

Aislyn: How do you get there?

Ali: You can drive there, it takes about eight hours from Reykjavík to Ísafjörður there, ’cause you’re going in and out of fjords, the West Fjords. Or you can fly there, weather dependent there is a, there are domestic flights, it takes no time at all, but they’re canceled a lot. So you just have to be flexible. Icelandic weather demands flexibility. So whether you’re flying or driving or sitting around outside.

Aislyn: And a great sweater.

Ali: Exactly. And a lopapesa. So I recommend going up to the West Fjords. You don’t even have to go all the way there. You can go to the Snæfellsnes Peninsula, which is just south of the West fjords. It’s utterly beautiful. You’ll see those famous Icelandic mountains, you can see all the way to Greenland. But go, go get into the West Fjords if you can. They’re off the Ring Road. If you’re gonna do the Ring Road, take the time to stop in Akureyri, that’s the largest city outside of Reykjavík. It’s in the north, and it’s really cool, really cool town. They have a restaurant that’s known for a hamburger with fries inside of it.

Aislyn: Well, I’m there for that.

Ali: Exactly. Yeah. And then the East Fjords, you have Egilsstaðir. Oh, I can’t say that one. Well, Egilsstaðir. And then Höfn, they have a lobster festival. They have their own natural hot pools over there. That’s probably the least visited area is the northeast corner. There’s some really cool geothermal activity there. There’s interesting people, of course. And there’s a lobster festival.

And then of course there’s the highlands in the center of the country.

Aislyn: Yeah. How are those different, would you say? From like a visual, even just visually?

Ali: The Highlands are a desolate tundralike environment, devoid of settlements. So the whole circle around Iceland, you will find towns. Eventually you’ll go a lot of distance without seeing anything. But the Highlands are—that is it for intrepid travelers who are looking for an adventurous, remote, utterly stunning, but hard to access and hard to navigate environment that it is not for beginners.

Aislyn: OK. What do you do there? Is it kind of like a, I dunno, off the grid camping type thing?

Ali: You take a four-by-four up there and you’d be camping. A lot of people who are passionate about photography love going up there. It’s an outdoor adventure destination. Not in the sense of skiing or anything like that, but hiking and exploration.

Aislyn: Is there much in terms of infrastructure? It kind of sounds like nothing. So you . . .

Ali: It is, it’s not just off the beaten path. It’s its own path. And it’s the kind of path you have to want to walk. And if you aren’t sure if that level of activity is for you, it’s best to really look into it because it’s—one thing that the increase in tourism has done for Iceland is really put a strain on their volunteer rescue system. Icelanders like to help people and when you get lost in the wilderness, they will do everything they can to come rescue you.

This was part of how they really improved their infrastructure around tourism was with signage and staying on the path is very important because it’s extremely easy to get lost. It’s extremely easy to succumb to unexpected weather, which is all of Iceland’s weather. And then it lands on the rescue team, which are a group of volunteers in the country that will come out and save you. And sometimes it can negatively impact them.

So I would just say, if you wanna go deep wilderness, hire the right guide. Hire it. Do not do it by yourself if you don’t know what you’re doing. That’s a great second visit activity.

Aislyn: OK. I like it. I mean, it sounds, yeah, I’m thinking maybe fifth or sixth visit even.

Ali: Yeah. When you run out of other things, but it’s beautiful and worth it, but it’s not for everyone.

Aislyn: Winter you mentioned also sounds like an incredible time to visit, in particular because there is the Iceland Airwaves Music Festival. Can you tell me more about that? And of course, aurora sightings, things like that. Like have you spent much time there in the winter?

Ali: Yes. So I’ve been to Iceland in every season and winter is stunning and I highly recommend it. There’s a lot of darkness, but it’s cool. It’s interesting. Obviously for Icelanders who have to endure the entire winter. Many of them don’t. A lot of them, if you wanna meet Icelanders in the winter, go to Thailand. They love to be there in January, February.

But Iceland for a winter trip is amazing. You have Iceland Airwaves in November, which is just an incredible music festival throughout Reykjavík that I have had the fortune to go to. And then of course the aurora—a lot of people don’t know this just because it’s really about physics, but the aurora is not visible during periods of high sunlight, when the Earth is tilted that direction.

So it is only visible during the dark months and it requires dark sky to see, and it requires no clouds to see. So going aurora hunting in the winter is an amazing experience. Don’t expect it to happen on the first night. It may not happen at all. I’ve been there many times in the winter and not seen them.

I recommend that if you want a better guarantee of the aurora on a trip to Iceland, if you’re coming from the United States, take a red-eye flight to Iceland, sit on the left, north-facing side of the plane. You’re above the clouds. You have a much better chance of seeing it. And I have on Icelandair, seen the aurora multiple times from that side of the plane. And the pilot will usually point it out.

And sometimes some hotels will have a button where if you press it, they’ll wake you up if the aurora is sighted. But the winter’s really a magical time to go. And in January they have Þorrablót, which is a winter festival that they have in each community, with traditional foods they perform plays, it’s very community oriented. It’s not really for tourists. There aren’t really even tourism experiences around that.

But just the vibe during that time is very, “We’re here together, we’re gonna get through this tough winter period.” And it’s kind of when the culture comes alive, the bars are full, music is playing, people are in close quarters with each other, so it’s not as, it’s still very beautiful outside, of course, but it’s a great time to experience Icelandic culture.

Aislyn: How cool. I like that idea of traveling specifically during that time for that connection.

Ali: It’s when the lopapeysa really comes in handy.

Aislyn: Yeah, I bet. I feel like it’s important to talk a little bit about Icelandic cuisine. So what have you learned over the years? What have you discovered? What do you love?

Ali: The main thing that I’ve learned about Icelandic cuisine is that it has a very poor narrative around it. The food is much better than the narrative suggests, and I think this has changed as tourism has become more popular. People thought it was all fermented shark and whale and puffin. And the thing about whaling in Iceland is it’s just one guy. Just one guy who has a company. It’s not an Icelandic thing, it’s an Icelandic person.

Aislyn: I didn’t know that.

Ali: Yeah, in Iceland, the per capita stuff can really get to them. You know, they have the most Nobel Prize winners for literature because they have one. One person. There’s a lot of book writing there. There’s a real love of books there. If you ever fall in love with an Icelandic person, get them a book for Christmas and that is the best gift you could give.

Aislyn: The key to their heart.

Ali: Yes, exactly. But Icelandic cuisine is, this is an island nation. The ingredients are coming from within the country. It’s coming from the surrounding sea, and it’s coming from where you are, which makes their food really fresh, incredible, healthy.

And there’s plenty of foods that, like svið, which is the boiled sheep’s head, not my thing. Also not that bad. Hákarl, which is the fermented shark. It’s not, it’s something they eat during Þorrablót. It’s not like they’re all munching on it all year round. Some people really like it if you grew up with it. It’s like durian fruit. If you grew up with it, it’s got a strong flavor. It’s not bad. But it just might not be for everyone.

Puffin is not that common to find. It’s sort of a gimmicky thing. However, it can be done right. And then whale is really a gimmicky thing. But overall I find Icelandic food—they have some of the best sandwiches I’ve ever had are in Iceland. Some of the best Thai food I’ve ever had, it’s in Iceland. They have a lot of Thai immigration. And so the Thai food happens to be quite good.

So it’s not just traditional Icelandic cuisine. However, if you do want that, there’s now really high-end restaurants like Dill in Reykjaviík. That was the country’s first Michelin star, and that’s an incredible chef Gunnar. He grew up in the north of Iceland and had a farm and incorporates all these incredible, locally sourced ingredients that he plates and cooks in a way that are very inventive and I highly recommend going out outside what you think is your comfort zone to eat Icelandic food because you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Aislyn: Very cool. Thank you. Well, you mentioned that over the years you continue to discover new things. So I was curious to know one of your favorite recent discoveries in Iceland.

Ali: One of my favorite recent discoveries in Iceland is not a place, it’s a moment in time. They had during World War II, something that they call the Situation or the Circumstances.

So female travelers know that Iceland is one of the best places for women to travel alone, and that it has one of the highest quality of life rankings for women. And that was because of the Situation in the 1940s, when the Allied forces were using Iceland as a base in the Atlantic. The soldiers, particularly the American soldiers, so deeply captivated the eyes of Icelandic women that it caused a reaction, culturally, with the Icelandic men, where they said, “What the hell? We want our women back. You can’t just take our women.”

And they started kidnapping their own women to keep them away from the hot American soldiers. And there was a backlash against that, a reckoning where Iceland looked at itself and said, “This is not how we treat women. This is not, we cannot do this.” And thus became the first country in the world to have a female prime minister, the first country in the world to have women on money.

It is a very women-friendly country now, and that was because they had a reckoning with themselves as a result of hot American soldiers. So there’s also still, as a result of that, a bit of love for American culture, you can see in the cars, the music, and yeah, the Situation helped inform the progressive place that Iceland is today. So it’s not a thing that you can go out and see on a tour, but you will notice it in the regard that the country has for women.

Aislyn: It is interesting. I mean, I love the way that you set it up too with the hot American soldiers, but it does seem like it’s a country that’s very good at self-reflection. I mean, with the banking crisis, with even with tourism over-tourism, what do you think that is about Iceland as a culture?

Ali: I think Iceland is an incredibly proud country. They greatly pride themselves on who they are and their national and cultural identity. I think that’s why tourism has actually not created as much conflict as we might think, because from their perspective it’s like, “It’s about damn time you guys saw Iceland as how great it is.” The best thing you can do in Iceland to connect with people is talk about how much you like Iceland and talk about the weather. Those are the two main topics of conversation.

So they have problems just like any other place, but from their perspective, they’ve reacted to tourism in a way that says, “Yeah, we will create space for you and we’re proud that you’re here to share what we love so much about ourselves with each other.” And so I think it just comes naturally to them to know they have a strong sense of self.

And frankly, in an environment like that, weather-wise, and with the sea, as powerful as it is, with food being as hard to come by [as it has been] over the last thousand years since the Vikings first came there, it’s a difficult place to live. There’s not a whole lot of time for delusion. You have to be very realistic about who you are and where you are and what it takes to thrive in that environment. And that’s what they’ve done and that’s what they’re doing with tourism. The weather has changed in Iceland when it comes to tourism and they’re doing what they’ve always done, which is adapt.

Aislyn: Yeah. Wow. That’s very profound, huh? I had a good friend who is, was Icelandic and I’m just, as you’ve been talking, I’ve been thinking about her, ’cause I didn’t know she was until one day I heard her on the phone and she was speaking Icelandic to her mother. And I was like, “What is coming out of your mouth?” You know? And it was—just a really incredible person. So do you speak Icelandic? That was one of the questions I wanted to ask.

Ali: Nei, I understand quite a bit. I used to speak more when I was romantically involved with the country. But oddly enough, I studied it in college. I have a degree in linguistics.

Aislyn: Oh.

Ali: And my goal was to learn the hardest languages. Everyone thinks Icelandic is hard because of all the consonants and the long words. It’s hard because there’s so many conjugations. It’s a difficult language to learn because every person, every gender, every blah blah blah has a different verb conjugation.

But once you get the hang of the pronunciation, it’s actually pretty easy to piece together. So I can read quite a bit. I can have short conversations. And even to this day, for whatever reason, when something surprising happens, like, you know, you drop a plate or something, and your reaction would be to go, “No!” I still say it in Icelandic. I still go, “Nei.” And I’m like, Where did that come from? But I do try to collect some of the fun words that they have. Like one of my personal favorites is—we have windshield wiper fluid here in the states, right? The Icelandic word for that translated into English is “window piss.” And they really call it that.

Aislyn: Oh my goodness.

Ali: And that’s just, they’re very funny. The sense of humor there is very silly. And that’s just an example of it. So I try to pick up words like that. But I would love to fully learn the language. I need to go back and immerse myself again.

Aislyn: It sounds like it.

Ali: That’s the trick.

Aislyn: Yes, exactly. With any language, right? It’s hard to do without being there. It’s just like there’s no motivation to do it in quite the same way.

Ali: But they, even though they all speak English, it’s not like other countries in Europe where they also speak English. If you speak a little bit of Icelandic, they love it. If you try, you will get a good reaction from locals. However, you can still have a conversation in English.

Aislyn: OK. If you had to pick a couple of words to share with people to try to start a conversation, what would you suggest?

Ali: Hmm, so do you remember when Iceland was in the World Cup, and 10 percent of the country was in France to see it? The chant was “Aufrom fucking, Iceland!” “Let’s fucking go, Iceland!” They would probably love that.

But I also recommend listening to Icelandic music. There’s a lot of great Icelandic music out there. And pick up some of the words from that. One of my favorites is a kids’ song, “Glaðasti hundur í heimi,” or the “Happiest Dog in the World.”

Aislyn: That’s great.

Ali: And everyone loves the song. So it’s an easy way to connect. But you can just say hello and takk fyrir. “Thank you very much.” Simple stuff, but learning “thank you” in any language usually goes pretty far.

Aislyn: Right. Yeah. It’s just like a simple way to say like, “I recognize that I’m on your turf, and thank you.”

Ali: Yeah, exactly.

Aislyn: Oh, that’s wonderful. And it’s easy. Yeah. Not one that you’ll forget.

Ali: Yeah, takk. And it’s also the same in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. So four countries in one fell swoop. Yeah.

Aislyn: That’s great. It goes a long way.

Aislyn: Well, I’d love to close with any final tips that you have for people. You mentioned some outdoor tips in terms of how to be respectful of the culture, but cultural etiquette, tips . . . What should travelers know before visiting?

Ali: So I think the basic tips for visiting Iceland are—you’re welcome to come. They welcome tourists. I think there’s just a couple of things to know, like when you’re driving down a road, don’t stop in the middle of the road or even pull over to take a photo. A lot of car accidents happen this way. Go to a designated pullout. This has just been a big thing that’s changed with the rise in tourism, that’s noticeably changed.

Obviously, I mentioned before, but stay on marked paths in nature. I’ll never forget the heartbreak of watching a tour bus of, like, 100 people unload at the glacier lagoon and just crush nests full of arctic tern chicks. They’re ground-nesting and you can’t see them, by evolution. So it’s not worth it to go off the beaten path ’cause you might cause some real destruction. Just stay on the path, read the warning signs; they’re there to save your life. If you see 10 warning signs in a row, that’s not a challenge. It’s information.

Don’t stack cairns, don’t just stack the rocks. That’s been a big issue lately. People stacking rocks; just don’t do that. They don’t like it. And then culturally, it’s still very much, you’re required to shower before you get into a pool or a hot tub. And you have to do it naked. And you might even get someone local instructing you on how to properly bathe yourself.

Icelanders do not have that American sense of shame around bodies and sex, and so it’s perfectly normal for that interaction to happen. And just go with the flow. Just enjoy the experience of being somewhere else and experiencing that.

Aislyn: OK. Don’t get creeped out when someone’s like, “No, you need to scrub here.”

Ali: Yeah. And that has happened before, and they’re separated by gender. So it’s, you know, it’s not a lurid experience. It’s just hygiene in Iceland.

Aislyn: Wonderful. Well, thank you. Or takk.

Ali: Takk fyrir.

Aislyn: This has been really an illuminating conversation, so I really appreciate you taking the time.

Ali: Thanks so much, Aislyn. It’s really fun to be here and to think about my favorite place.

Aislyn: And that brings us to the end of our journey through Iceland with Ali Wunderman. In the show notes, you’ll find a link to Ali’s Afar.com story about Iceland, as well as her guidebook and her recommendations for Icelandic music to get you in the mood.

You can also follow Ali’s travels and writing on social media. We’ve included those links in the show notes as well. Thank you for listening to Unpacked. I’m Aislyn Greene, and until next time, keep exploring, and just remember to stay on the marked paths, and always shower before using the hot springs.