If you get inspired to travel to Iceland and want to get around and see or shoot these places, I highly recommend getting the latest edition of Kotrabok (unlike the other books, you can find this on Amazon). It’s a spiral-bound road atlas of Iceland at 1:300 000 scale.
A PAPER map book? Yes, a PAPER map book. Wireless is great and ubiquitous in the city. Many places in the photo guide have some cell service, but many do not, and those that do often don’t have data service. So, Google is not your friend.
Yes, you can download maps ahead of time. But this book is better. First, you get a larger-scale view than possible on your phone. In addition to street maps of all the towns, the road maps all have topographical contour lines. That’s really important to understanding why the road goes the way it goes and what might be a tricky drive.
Iceland is really non-flat. We all know that intellectually, but it’s really not flat. These maps do a great job of depicting that. Plus, you can, if you are a map junky like me, spend hours flipping through trying to sound out the placenames.
Icelandic is very close to Old Norse. And not very close to English. A Viking could make himself understood in Iceland. He couldn’t read anything as the Latin alphabet didn’t come to Iceland until centuries later, but he could chat.
Before we go back, I will spend some time learning basic language skills. Even if I’m not comfortable trying to hold a conversation, I want to be able to pronounce the names of places I want to visit so I can at least ask for help or directions or whatever.
