Forty years on this coast, navigating the glacial realm.
Family owned. Second generation. The third tagging along.
Vatnajökull Travel is a family company from Höfn. We have been taking people out onto this coast since 1985 — and we still live on it.
From the first boat on the lagoon.
Guðbrandur starts in travel
The founder, Guðbrandur, started working in logistics and travel in 1983, when there was very little of it out here.
A film crew on the lagoon
He worked on a James Bond film being shot out on Jökulsárlón — A View to a Kill. He watched a crew move across a lagoon full of drifting ice. Most people saw a location. He saw something else: if a camera crew could get out among the icebergs, so could travellers.
The first boats on Jökulsárlón
He put the first boat trips on the lagoon and ran them for two summers. Nobody had done it before. His son Palli spent those summers there, six and seven years old, which is as good a reason as any that he is still here.
Into Lónsöræfi
From the lagoon the company moved inland, running tours into the roadless highland country above Höfn.
Vatnajökull Travel as it is today
The company that operates today was founded by Guðbrandur.
The second generation
After 40 years Guðbrandur called it a day and retired, with Palli taking over the business. Forty years after the first boat, the third generation — Palli's son Styrmir — is already coming along for the ride, helping his dad carry on the project his grandfather started.
Local, honest, and small on purpose.
We hire local.
Not as a policy — as the point. A guide who grew up here has lived through the floods and the eruptions, has watched the glacier pull back within their own lifetime, and can tell you what this coast was like before the road. That cannot be trained into someone in a season. Personal stories from the area, with a foundation of concrete knowledge of the culture and fauna, are in our mind integral to an entertaining and educational trip.
We were part of building this.
The Southeast did not arrive as a finished destination. A handful of local families and operators made it, and we were among them. The area is filled with entrepreneurs, trailblazers and dozens of wonderful family-owned local businesses.
We say what is true.
If the walk is optional, we say so. If the weather will decide the day, we say that too. Guests get the real version, before they book and on the coach.
We stay small on purpose.
Our own coaches, our own guides, and a family that answers its own phone.
Two generations, and two who keep us honest.
Páll Guðbrandsson
Owner, general managerBorn and raised in Höfn. Moved to Reykjavík and worked in advertising for 15 years before heeding the call from home and taking the reins at Vatnajökull Travel from his father. Now his own sons are tagging along and starting to help out.
Guðbrandur Jóhannsson
FounderVatnajökull Travel's godfather. A true trailblazer in Icelandic travel. Founded the company and built it up before passing the torch. His work as a travel entrepreneur, teacher and regional manager of the area's Search and Rescue all contributed to Vatnajökull Travel's ethos.
Máni and Rjómi
Quality control and funThese two head the company's department of quality control and fun. If it needs tasting they will be sure to be on it, and they provide a substitute service for hugs and kisses for dog-owners missing their furbabies.
Questions about a call day, or a private tour?
We answer the same day. Ask for the programme, or tell us the day you have in mind.
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