Jökulsárlón, the Iceland Glacier Lagoon: Boats, Beach and Getting There

Jökulsárlón is where Breiðamerkurjökull breaks into icebergs, right beside Route 1. There is no gate and no ticket. If you are planning an Iceland glacier day tour around it, here is how the lagoon formed, how you get onto the water and what the parking costs.

A lagoon that did not exist a century ago

You are looking at a lake the ice made recently. In the Little Ice Age, Breiðamerkurjökull pushed south until its front stood about 250 metres from the sea. When it began to retreat, water filled the hollow it left behind. The park calls Jökulsárlón the largest and most active glacial lake in Iceland.

The lake sits at the mouth of a trough the glacier carved, 200 to 300 metres deep and 25 km long. Icebergs calve off the glacier front into that deep water and drift slowly towards the outlet and the sea.

1. 18th–19th centuries Breiðamerkurjökull reaches to within about 250 m of the sea.
2. 1930s The first lakes appear on the outwash plain as the glaciers pull back.
3. 2008 Vatnajökull National Park is founded.
4. 2017 Breiðamerkursandur, the plain around the lagoon, joins the park.
5. 5 July 2019 The park is inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
6. Today The lagoon still grows, fed by a glacier that is still calving.

Diamond Beach across the road

Diamond Beach is the black-sand shore on the far side of Route 1, where the icebergs that leave the lagoon wash up on the black sand. The park calls it Fellsfjara. You can walk to it from the lagoon car park by passing under the bridges over the Jökulsá river, on a path with signs along the way.

The eastern shore, Eystri-Fellsfjara, has its own car park and a photography exhibition about the national park beside it. Trail B2 runs 1 km along that beach in about 40 minutes. The coach day from Reykjavík gives you about half an hour on the sand.

Fjallsárlón, 10 km west

Fjallsárlón is the smaller lagoon, 10 km west of Jökulsárlón, in front of the glacier Fjallsjökull. The park runs it as its own destination, with toilets and a cafeteria by the car park, and notes that it draws fewer crowds. If the main lagoon is packed when you arrive, you can drive back west and have a similar view with more room.

It is also where one of the glacier hikes here starts. That hike meets at the reception building next to Frost Restaurant and combines a hike on the ice in crampons with a boat trip among the icebergs. Its group is capped at 20.

Three short trails, and one long one

The park marks four trails on Breiðamerkursandur. Three are short enough to walk before or after a tour. The fourth, B3, links the two lagoons across the plain and is the only one you need to plan a day around.

Stay on the marked paths. The park looks after this ground every day of the year, and the plain is a nesting area in spring and summer.

On the water: three ways

Nobody sells a ticket to the lagoon itself. You go on the water with an operator, and which one you pick decides how fit you need to be.

Seals, skuas and reindeer

Breiðamerkursandur is one of the park’s nesting grounds. The great skua nests here, and so do the red-throated diver, the greylag goose and the barnacle goose. Keep to the paths in spring and summer and give nesting birds room.

Large seal colonies live where the rivers meet the sea, so scan the water where the lagoon drains out under the bridge. In winter, herds of reindeer come down onto the eastern side of the plain. None of these animals is on a schedule, so treat a sighting as luck rather than a promise.

Fees, toilets and the rangers’ number

The lagoon is inside the national park, and the park charges its regional fee for parking here as it does at Skaftafell. There is no other charge to stand on the shore.

Parking

1,110 ISK for a car with up to five seats, 1,440 ISK for 6 to 9 seats, 450 ISK for a motorcycle. Valid until midnight.

Paying

Cameras read your plate. Pay online or at the machines in the car park.

Two stops, one day

Half price if you paid at another fee area of the park the same day.

Toilets

Flush toilets at both lagoons.

Food

Privately run restaurants and seasonal services by the car parks.

Rangers

842-4355, on duty every day of the year. They also look after the ice caves in the glacier above the lagoon.

The lagoon is open all year, weather and road conditions permitting. In winter the park advises crampons on the paths and winter tyres on the car.

Asked about the lagoon

Where these facts come from

The depth, the trough, the history of the lakes, the trails, the wildlife, the services and the rangers’ number are the national park’s own, read 23 September 2026. The fee is from the park’s pricelist. Anything said about a tour comes from that tour’s own listing.

• Jökulsárlón: services, trails and wildlife (national park)
• Breiðamerkursandur: how the lagoons formed (national park)
• The smaller lagoon to the west (national park)
• Glaciology: crevasses, blue ice and the lagoon trough (national park)
• Pricelist: the regional fee, camping and permits (national park)