Daylight hours in Iceland, month by month

About four and a half hours around the solstice on 21 December in Reykjavík, with the sun rising after 11:00 and setting before 16:00. By the end of January it is nearly seven hours, and by the equinox in March, twelve. The north has slightly less in midwinter and slightly more in midsummer.

In the far north, at Grímsey on the Arctic Circle, it stays above the horizon for a few days around 21 June. In Reykjavík it sets for about three hours in June, but the sky never gets dark: there is no real night from mid-May to early August anywhere in Iceland.

When the sun is more than about 12 degrees below the horizon. That first happens for an hour or two in the last ten days of August and lasts until mid-April; the dark-hours column on this page shows the window for each month.

No. Iceland stays on UTC all year, so every time on this page is local time and never shifts for daylight saving. In practice that puts Iceland an hour behind London in winter and two hours behind in summer, and the long summer evenings run later on the clock than the latitude alone would give.

With five hours of light you can drive about two hours and see two or three places a day, and you should not be on a mountain pass in the dark. The planner uses the daylight of your dates to size each day; the winter driving guide has the rules.