East Iceland is the region Visit Iceland calls Austurland. The Eastfjords are its coast, from Berufjörður in the south to Borgarfjörður Eystri in the north. The Ring Road can rush the edge of this country. The fjords are the slower road between the headlands.
What the region is
The East Iceland page describes snow-capped mountains, deep fjords, waterfalls, fishing villages, and Iceland’s largest forest. It says the east is less crowded than the places most visitors concentrate on, that wild reindeer live in the valleys and highlands here and nowhere else in the country, and that seals and seabirds are on the coast, with puffins in the nesting season from spring through summer. The road administration’s highland page also says the reindeer population is limited to east Iceland and often uses the highland west of Snæfell, north of Vatnajökull. Seyðisfjörður, at the head of a long fjord, is described as a town of nineteenth-century timber houses and a creative community.
The ferry Norröna is the other way into this region. Visit Iceland’s practical page says the car ferry sails weekly between Denmark and Seyðisfjörður, so people can bring a vehicle. A related description says the sailing stops in the Faroe Islands. That is a different arrival from KEF, and it lands you in the east rather than on Reykjanes.
The drive
From Höfn to Egilsstaðir, the Ring Road article says, the road zigzags through the fjords and villages. In summer, Route 939, Öxi, is a gravel mountain shortcut that saves 68 kilometers between Djúpivogur and Egilsstaðir. The same sentence says the road is steep and winding and not a casual choice. Gravel is drivable in an ordinary car, Visit Iceland’s driving article says, but speed has to drop where pavement ends, because that change is where many crashes happen.
Egilsstaðir is also a domestic-flight town. Visit Iceland says Icelandair flies there daily from Reykjavík Domestic Airport. The airport in Egilsstaðir is not Keflavík, and a rental car hired at KEF does not appear in an Eastfjords car park unless you drove it there or arranged something the companies’ own rules allow. This guide does not describe one-way rental rules it did not read.
The east is a slow landscape on purpose. Visit Iceland’s planning article says Icelanders talk about road distance in hours, not kilometers, because 20 kilometers of gravel is not 20 kilometers of highway, and because people stop. Adding an hour to your own estimate is the rule of thumb that article gives. On a fjord road, that advice is the itinerary.
Sources
- Visit Iceland, East Iceland
- Visit Iceland, The Ring Road
- Vegagerðin, The Icelandic highland interior
- Visit Iceland, Practical information
- Visit Iceland, Driving in Iceland
- Visit Iceland, Planning a trip
- Visit Iceland, Getting around