Lake Mývatn day tours from Akureyri

6 min read Updated October 2026 Compare all tours

Lake Mývatn lies 84 kilometres east of Akureyri, about 1 hour 16 minutes by car on the Ring Road. Nearly every day tour drives out along Eyjafjörður, stops at Goðafoss after about half an hour, and then spends most of the day around the lake before turning back. Six hours is the usual length. Tours that add Dettifoss take seven to nine.

The lake covers about 37 square kilometres, is on average only 2.5 metres deep and holds around 50 islands and islets. It is protected by law together with the river Laxá and listed under the Ramsar Convention as a wetland of international importance. The name comes from the midges, which matters if you travel in summer.

What you see on a standard day

The stops repeat from tour to tour. At Skútustaðir you walk among pseudocraters, formed about 2,300 years ago when lava ran over wet ground and the water exploded into steam; marked paths of 1.5 and 3.5 kilometres loop around them. Dimmuborgir is a field of odd lava formations left behind when a lava lake drained, also about 2,300 years old. Visitors there have to stay on the marked paths.

Most tours then cross to Hverir below Námafjall, where tour descriptions promise steaming vents and bubbling mud pools. Some add Grjótagjá, a small lava cave with hot water inside, or a walk up Hverfjall. That crater is about 2,500 years old and 452 metres high; the path from the north-west car park takes 10 to 25 minutes, and the loop around the rim is 3.2 kilometres.

A day this long means short stops. Reviewers of several tours wrote that they wanted more time at each place. Reviews of the Saga Travel port tour mention a guide who reversed the order of the stops so the group arrived after the big coaches had left.

From the cruise port or your hotel

Most tours on this page are shore excursions. They wait at Akureyri port, follow the ship's docking time and run mainly from May to September, the main cruise season. Fox Adventure promises to have you back at least 40 minutes, usually 60 minutes, before your ship leaves. Saga Travel's Dettifoss tour goes further and refunds you in full if the ship does not dock at all. Without such a clause, reviews show that a skipped port can leave you without your money. Our shore excursions page covers this in detail.

If you stay in Akureyri, look for hotel pickup in the comparison. The Traveling Viking, Imagine and Star Travel all run day tours that collect you in town. The Special Tours minibus starts from its office in town instead, and reviewers found it hard to locate, so allow time. Star Travel also runs a 4x4 version for at most 12 people that adds Dettifoss and lasts eight to nine hours.

Lunch, languages and group size

Food is handled very differently. The BusTravel Iceland tours include a packed lunch with a sandwich and water. Saga Travel's tour with lunch serves a light meal and adds the Mývatn Heritage and Nature Museum. The standard Saga port tour gives you coffee and kleina, a twisted Icelandic doughnut, at Hotel Goðafoss and a stop to buy lunch. Fox Adventure stops at a café late in the day and recommends a packed lunch. Several other tours include no food at all.

German speakers can join a small-group land excursion for at most 19 people that crosses the Víkurskarð pass with a German-speaking guide. BusTravel Iceland also runs a German-language port tour with packed lunch, and other tours list German among several languages. Reviews of a few tours, including the BusTravel German tour, describe days when the booked language was not offered and the tour ran in English.

Group size ranges from the 16- to 17-seat minibus on the Imagine port tour to large coaches. Reviewers found that minibus warm and cramped, while reviewers of larger buses complain about waiting for latecomers.

Earth Lagoon and the bath tours

The geothermal lagoon at Jarðbaðshólar, long known as Mývatn Nature Baths, now runs as Earth Lagoon Mývatn. A new building was due to open in summer 2026 and the site has been in a soft opening. The water is between 36 and 40 degrees. Many tour titles still use the old name.

Read the inclusions carefully here. The BusTravel port tour includes the lagoon ticket with a packed lunch, though not the towel. Fox Adventure's port tour (titled "Godafoss Waterfall, Myvatn and Baths"), Star Travel's day trip to Goðafoss, Mývatn and Nature Baths, and Imagine's guided tour from Akureyri all stop at the lagoon but do not include the entry. You buy the ticket yourself, for example through our geothermal baths page, and you bring swimwear and a towel or rent one there.

Summer midges and winter light

From June into September, reviews of several tours describe swarms of small midges around the lake and at the Grjótagjá cave. Some guests found them bad enough to skip the cave. A head net weighs almost nothing, and several reviewers wished they had been told to bring one.

Some tours run all year. Star Travel's day trip with pickup has reviews from every month, the Traveling Viking tour describes frost and low winter sun, and Saga Travel sells a separate winter version with hotel pickup. Winter changes the day: on 1 December the sun rises at 10:54 and sets at 15:09 in Akureyri, so a six-hour tour spends part of its time in twilight. The Ring Road is paved and open all year, subject to the weather. More about the area itself is on our page on Lake Mývatn.