Exploring the northeast corner of Iceland

We head north along a fairly big highway until we reach the small village of Kopasker at the small village the road is divided into two – the main highway continue to the east while a smaller road continue to the north. We take the small road north which is very lightly travelled. The road is in pretty good condition and a standard sedan would have no trouble driving along this road.

The road takes us into the northern most part of Iceland. The landscape up here is different from most of the rest of Iceland since we are in the artic part of the country – it might still be south of the Arctic Circle – but only just since the Arctic Circle is just 2½ kilometers north of the northeastern point of Iceland. There are no trees this far north and most of the vegetation is just moss crowing on the many rocks up in the area.

It is an easy drive up this far north since the traffic is very light along the 53 kilometers of road we are driving we only spot a total of 11 vehicles of which one is a tractor pulling a campervan and one is an oversized ATV driving fast along the road – the last 9 were regular cars and none of them seemed to be tourist but locals driving fairly quickly along the local road.

The road does have some warning sign along the way – there are signs warning about birds on the road. And there certainly are a lot of birds up here along the road. There are large groups of birds flying above the road and to the sides of the road so we have to take care not to kill a couple of birds while driving along the road.

We enjoy the birds and stop several times to watch the birds along the road. There are many arctic terns flying above the roads and loads of ducks swimming just off the shore – there are many other birds which has made it up here to bring up their new babies during the short arctic summer with its long days.

We take our time exploring the area and enjoying the birds undisturbed by other tourist who doesn’t seem to make the effort to depart from the Ring Road and go on a detour along the north east corner of Iceland.