Free Northern Lights Tour
One of Icelandair’s least expensive packages is now an even better deal. Build your own budget holiday and get a free Northern Lights tour. The Northern Lights are a spectacular natural phenomenon often seen dancing in fantastic colors across the Arctic Sky. This trip takes you out of the city and into the countryside to hunt for these elusive, beautiful lights.
From $499* per person based on double occupancy. Dates of availability vary based on Seattle or New York/Boston departure. Tour runs when conditions for Northern Lights are likely.
Click here for more info.
Early Bird Special: $100 Off Flights From D.C.
Travelers who book before Nov. 30 can save $100 off airfare and two nights stay at Icelandair Hotel Loftleidir with this great new offer. This special package deal departs Washington, D.C., at an ideal time to experience all Iceland has to offer. Enjoy shopping for quality Icelandic products, delicious gourmet Icelandic cuisine, invigorating outdoor adventure, legendary nightlife, highland wilderness beauty, soothing spas and more. From $699* per person based on double occupancy.
Click here for more info.
*Prices quoted are exclusive of applicable taxes and official charges by destination of approximately $100-$190, per person including the Sept. 11th Security Fee of $2.50 per U.S. enplanement.
“With a national population of barely half of the greater Seattle area but a staggeringly high literacy rate and a tendency to support all areas of artistic endeavor, Iceland boasts a high concentration of musicians — many of whom are in multiple bands at once. … Since punk first took hold of the city, its central tenets have remained strong – not the later interpreted tendency to piss off one’s parents but the necessity to do something different. No two bands in Reykjavik are alike. There’s just not enough room! And that has lead to a microcosm of music found nowhere else.” 
“The Imagine Peace Tower consists of a cylindrical ‘Wishing Well,’ about seven feet high, covered with special slabs of pure white glass onto which are carved Ono’s instruction ‘Imagine Peace’ in 24 different languages. The tower stands on a platform 55 feet in diameter and is faced with three types of native Icelandic stone. When the beams happen to coincide with the Northern Lights, as has occurred on a few nights, the celestial spectacle becomes a truly awesome tribute.”
Popular New York-based fashion blogger and author Jessica Quirk of 
Fjallabyggd (”Mountain Settlement”) is a skier’s dream. Its slopes are perfect for downhill and there are tracks for telemark skiing. Winter sport enthusiasts can also go ice skating, rent snowmobiles and try ice fishing. Fjallabyggd (pop. 2,200) is a municipality in northeast Iceland uniting the towns of Ólafsfjördur and Siglufjördur. Good news for visitors: the distance between the towns actually dropped to 90 miles, down from 140 miles with the opening of a new tunnel in 2009.
The theme music for a viral video by our friends at 
In a related story, the Iceland Convention and Incentive Bureau won the Best Marketing Award from the International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA).
Scientists at the University of Iceland Institute of Earth Sciences now consider that the volcanic eruption which began on 
Ólöf Arnalds new album, Innundir Skinni has achieved critical acclaim from the notoriously aloof music review site Pitchfork. The album, which translates loosely to “under the skin” received an 8 out of 10, and is compared to her previous album thusly: “Innundir Skinni, is fuller-sounding than Við Og Við, but its pleasures are just as elusive and profound.” See “They Said It” below for more on Ólöf.
If hiking on a glacier sounds like something you could only experience on television in sweatpants, think again. An Iceland glacier walk is a great way to experience nature and the Sólheimajökull glacier is an ideal way to spend the day. The Eyjafjallajökull massif is only two hours from Reykjavík, and is a safe and easy glacier walk to an ice field where a wonderland of natural ice sculptures, ridges and deep crevasses await your discovery. Just a little further east, the Sólheimajökull glacier tongue extends down from its mother glacier, Mýrdalsjökull, Iceland’s fourth largest. On the way back there’s a stop at the picturesque waterfalls of Skógafoss and Seljalandsfoss. Experienced mountain guides will teach you how to use the basic ice equipment necessary for this tour.
When things get too heated in Washington, D.C., next spring, members of Congress, and anyone else for that matter, can cool off outside the Beltway, way outside.
