Budget & guesthouse

The simplest way to sleep around Iceland is the guesthouse, gistiheimili in Icelandic: a family-run house or farm with a handful of rooms, often a shared bathroom down the corridor and a guest kitchen. Hostels add dorms and private rooms with the same shared facilities. We list 238 of these simple stays across 59 destinations, with an average score of 8.83 out of 10 over 100,491 guest reviews. Vík leads with 18, the obvious overnight stop on the south coast, then Hvammstangi, Höfn and Fellabær, across the Lagarfljót from Egilsstaðir, with 12 each. Read each listing for two things. First the bathroom: 30 of the descriptions say it is shared, and in a farmhouse that can mean one bathroom for several rooms. Then the kitchen: 80 mention a shared or guest kitchen, and that matters more than in most countries, because outside the towns restaurants are rare and close early. I would stock up at a Bónus or Krónan supermarket in the last town before a rural guesthouse and cook in. Breakfast is named in 49 descriptions, often as an extra to order the night before. For hostels, HI Iceland runs a network of 18 across the country, including Loft and Dalur in Reykjavík, with private rooms as well as dorms. The other daily habit worth adopting is the municipal pool, the sundlaug, found in most villages: you shower without a swimsuit before entering, and a soak in the hot pots replaces the bathtub a simple room lacks.