Iceland’s Into the Glacier experience crosses the Langjökull glacier in a former rocket launcher, then heads through an extraordinary network of man-made ice tunnels.
Into the Glacier tour details
- If self-driving, the Into the Glacier tour operates from Husafell in western Iceland. Tickets cost from €168.
- If you don’t have your own car, there is a version of the tour with pick-ups in Reykjavik. These tours cost from €248.
Into the Glacier tour review
Transport doesn’t get much cooler than a former NATO mobile rocket launcher with eight gigantic tyres that the driver can inflate and deflate at will from behind the steering wheel.
But serious terrain requires serious kit, and in near white-out conditions, this big beast is ploughing across Europe’s second largest glacier.
Langjökull is a major part of Iceland’s mountainous, ice-covered centre. It’s reached via increasingly small roads surrounded by lava fields. The growing mountains whet the appetite, the ice plays into all the Frozen fantasies, but once on the glacier itself, swirling winds and drizzly conditions reduce visibility to near zero.
The ice cave inside the Langjökull glacier
Power driving across the glacier, however, is only the first part of the adventure. The real treat is going inside. Inside Langjökull, a network of tunnels has been dug. And a small hatch in the blizzard leads to them.
The weirdness starts with the tunnel walls. They’ve had LEDs installed behind them, making the walls light up and look distinctly otherworldly. This was clearly built for show, and it was a mammoth effort. At 550m long, it is supposedly the world’s longest man-made ice cave, and it took 14 months to create, with teams of up to eight people using diamond-tipped drilling machines. Regular maintenance is necessary too, as the water dripping from the cave roof demonstrates.
History in the walls of the glacier
The glacier acts as a historic record, in a similar way to rings on a tree. The age of the ice in the walls can be ascertained by layers of sediment. About halfway down, there’s a really prominent stripe – that’s the result of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption in 2010 that cancelled thousands of trans-Atlantic flights.
What being inside a glacier sounds like
Oddly, though, it’s the sounds that are more spellbinding than the visuals. Further inside, the dripping tap-like noises give way to what sounds like a plumbing system chuntering away.
And, with 40 metres of ice overhead, that’s pretty much what it is. Pipe-like channels – called moulins – are cut by rainwater and ice melt, carrying water to the bottom of the glacier. Once there, it acts as the lubricated bed that the ice shifts around on.
Iceland’s glacier wedding chapel
A left turn brings one further surprise, with a few wooden benches laid out inside a dainty little cavern. This is a wedding chapel, and in the past it has been used by brides opting for high heels as crampons. The tour guide breaks into an Icelandic lullaby, with the stunning acoustics carrying the elf-like ditty far down the tunnels.
It adds a little twinkle of magic to a place that looks like where a fairy princess might hang out, far from the nasty trolls. Well, as long as she could put up with the gurgling noises…
Into the Glacier tour review summary
I found the Into the Glacier tour both lots of fun, and genuinely fascinating. I learned a lot along the way.
It is, alas, expensive. But everything in Iceland is expensive, and the Into the Glacier tour is not exceptionally pricy by Icelandic standards. It’s also something you’re not going to get to do anywhere else.
Book tickets from Husafell here or tickets from Reykjavik here. You can combine a visit with an adventure inside the Vidgelmir lava tunnel nearby.
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