Glaciers in Iceland
Ice defines Iceland almost as much as fire does. Glaciers blanket roughly 10–11% of the country — and many of them sit directly on top of active volcanoes, so when heat meets ice the result is a jökulhlaup, a glacial outburst flood. In Icelandic the word for glacier is jökull, which is why it ends nearly every name below.
How many glaciers are in Iceland?
Iceland has around 269 named glaciers, sorted into roughly 13–14 major ice caps plus more than a hundred outlet glaciers and dozens of smaller mountain glaciers. The distinction matters: an ice cap is a dome of ice thick enough to flow outward under its own weight, while the tongues that spill down from it into the valleys are outlet glaciers — so Sólheimajökull, Breiðamerkurjökull and Skaftafellsjökull are not separate glaciers but rivers of ice draining the big ice caps above them.
Icelandic glaciers are temperate: the ice sits close to 0 °C throughout, so meltwater is always present. Most of today's ice grew during the Little Ice Age (roughly 1450–1900) to a maximum around 1890 — and it is now retreating fast, losing on the order of 40 km² a year.
The largest glaciers in Iceland
By area, Iceland's biggest ice caps are Vatnajökull (~7,700 km² — Europe's largest by volume), Langjökull (~870 km²), Hofsjökull (~830 km²), and Mýrdalsjökull (~520–595 km²), followed by Drangajökull (~150 km²) in the northwest. Below them come the famous smaller caps — Eyjafjallajökull, Snæfellsjökull, Tindfjallajökull and others — and the many outlet glaciers that flow off the giants.
Names and list of Iceland’s glaciers
Iceland's major ice caps and best-known glaciers include:
- Vatnajökull — Europe's largest glacier by volume
- Langjökull — the second-largest ice cap
- Hofsjökull — the third-largest, at Iceland's centre
- Mýrdalsjökull — the fourth-largest, over the Katla volcano
- Drangajökull — the only ice cap in the Westfjords
- Eyjafjallajökull — famous for its 2010 eruption
- Snæfellsjökull — the ice-capped cone visible from Reykjavík
- Skaftafellsjökull — an accessible outlet glacier of Vatnajökull, at Skaftafell
- Tindfjallajökull, Torfajökull, Tungnafellsjökull, Eiríksjökull — smaller highland ice caps
- Sólheimajökull, Breiðamerkurjökull, Falljökull, Fjallsjökull, Skeiðarárjökull, Dyngjujökull — well-known outlet glaciers
- Okjökull (“Ok”) — the glacier declared “dead” in 2014
Interesting facts about Iceland’s glaciers
- Vatnajökull is the largest glacier in Europe by volume — holding roughly 3,000 km³ of ice, and capping Iceland's highest point, Hvannadalshnjúkur (2,109 m).
- Many glaciers hide active volcanoes: Katla under Mýrdalsjökull, and Grímsvötn — Iceland's most frequently erupting volcano — beneath Vatnajökull.
- Eyjafjallajökull's 2010 eruption grounded European air travel for about six days — the largest peacetime airspace shutdown the continent had seen.
- Jökulsárlón, Iceland's deepest lake, was carved by the retreating Breiðamerkurjökull and only began forming in the 1930s; the icebergs it calves wash up on nearby Diamond Beach.
- Snæfellsjökull, the glacier-capped volcano at the tip of the Snæfellsnes peninsula, can be seen from Reykjavík roughly 120 km away on a clear day.
- In 2014, Okjökull became the first Icelandic glacier officially declared “dead” — memorialised in 2019 with a plaque, “A letter to the future.” Because it is no longer a glacier, the -jökull was dropped from its name; it is now simply Ok.
