Autumn in Iceland: A Local’s Season, Briefly Shared

Something shifts here in late August, before most calendars admit autumn has arrived. The air turns crisper almost overnight. The wind carries the smell of dried heather and cooling earth. Birds that have filled the cliffs all summer start drifting south, and the long, golden evenings of July slowly give way to something more deliberate. 

For us, this is the season we come home to. After months of endless daylight and a busy tourist calendar, life turns inward again: more time with family, the first baking of the year, candles lit earlier in the evening. Travelers who visit in autumn often tell us they feel that shift too, even without quite knowing why. It is not the Iceland of the brochures. It is the Iceland we live in, for a few weeks before winter properly arrives.  

Réttir: The Sheep Come Home  

September marks réttir, one of the oldest and most deeply rooted traditions in the country. After a summer spent across the Highlands, Iceland’s sheep are gathered and herded back down to the farms, a job done on foot, on horseback, and with the help of sharp-eyed sheepdogs, exactly as it has been done since the original Norse settlement over a thousand years ago. Farmers, families, and often willing volunteers spend long days guiding flocks through valleys and across rivers before the main work begins at the sorting pens: separating each farm’s sheep from the mingled flock by their markings.  

Once the sorting is finished, the day turns into celebration. A réttaball, the roundup dance, brings food, music, and storytelling that can run long into the night. For visitors lucky enough to witness it, or to lend a hand if a local farmer welcomes the help, réttir offers a window into rural Icelandic life that no museum or tour bus quite manages to replicate.  

We take part in réttir ourselves, and if it interests you, we are happy to find a roundup near your travel dates and get you there as a welcomed guest rather than a bystander. Our full guide to réttir, Iceland’s autumn sheep roundup explains how the day runs. 

Berry Picking in the Hills  

Réttir’s quieter counterpart starts around the same time: berjamó, the gathering of wild crowberries and bilberries that blanket the moss across much of the country in September. The act itself is almost meditative, stooping into the heather, tasting as you go, watching a bucket fill slowly over a long afternoon. The harvest is almost beside the point. What matters is taking part in something that has shaped the rhythm of life here for generations, and most visitors who try it once find themselves unexpectedly absorbed. 

For many of us at Nonni Travel, this is the stretch of the year we quietly count down to. We gather with family and friends, fill our tubs, and spend the evenings turning berries into jam, cake, and smoothies, or freezing them so that in midwinter each spoonful still tastes of the summer just gone. If berjamó appeals to you, tell us, and we will weave a little of it into your days.

The Last Window Into the Highlands  

September is also the final stretch when Iceland’s interior remains reachable before the F-roads close for winter, typically by late September or early October depending on that year’s weather. Þórsmörk, the forested valley whose name means Thor’s Forest, and Landmannalaugar, with its rhyolite mountains and natural hot springs, are both still accessible on guided super jeep day tours through this narrow window, their colors at their most striking just before the season shuts the door on them entirely.  

Multi-day camping trips into the Highlands stop being realistic once the nights turn properly cold, but a single day tour by super jeep in September still gets you there if the Highlands are on your list. Once the roads close, that particular version of Iceland is gone until the following summer.  

When the Light Starts to Change  

By the third week of August, the days are already noticeably shorter than midsummer’s endless evenings, and the grass that stayed defiantly green all summer starts edging toward gold. September has two halves: the first still carries some warmth and long daylight, while the second turns crisper and more autumnal, especially once the birch forests around Reykjavík begin to color. 

Reykjavík’s Last Big Night Outside  

Culture Night, Menningarnótt, usually falls in late August, right at the edge of autumn, and it remains one of the best entry points into Icelandic cultural life for anyone visiting that week. The entire city center turns into an open-air stage: free concerts, art exhibitions, open museums, and street food running from morning until fireworks close the evening over the old harbor. The Reykjavík Marathon takes over the same day, and the streets downtown close to traffic entirely, leaving the whole center to walk between one event and the next at whatever pace feels right.  

A Film Festival in Unlikely Places  

Late September into early October brings the Reykjavík International Film Festival, RIFF, one of the more imaginative entries on the autumn calendar. Beyond the usual cinema screens, RIFF has a habit of staging films in spaces that have nothing to do with movies at all: swimming pools, lava tunnels, and other unexpected corners of the city, alongside the festival’s core lineup of international and Icelandic features, workshops, and director Q&As.  

A Festival of Light, Right When the Dark Returns  

Out on the Reykjanes Peninsula, on the first weekend of September, the town of Reykjanesbær, which includes Keflavík, marks the turning season with Ljósanótt, the Festival of Lights. Streets and buildings fill with light installations and decorations, alongside concerts and community events, a small but pointed act of defiance against the darkness that is, in its own way, very Icelandic: rather than waiting for winter to arrive, the town lights itself up first.  

October: The Country Quietly Changes Gear  

October brings noticeably more unpredictable weather than September, rain and wind arriving more often, but also some of the clearest, most far-reaching days of the year in between storms. The autumn colors that started in the birch forests around the capital spread farther across the countryside, set against the dark volcanic soil in a contrast that photographers chase deliberately this time of year. Some of the country’s seasonal attractions begin closing for winter, but what remains open feels noticeably quieter and more personal than the same spots in July.  

According to the old Icelandic calendar, winter itself officially begins on a Saturday between October 21st and 27th, a day called “fyrsti vetrardagur,” the first day of winter. For years, restaurants along Skólavörðustígur, the street leading up to Hallgrímskirkja, marked the occasion by handing out free kjötsúpa to anyone passing. The tradition has come and gone in recent years, so check with us whether it is running the year you visit. 

A Tower of Light for John Lennon  

From October 9th, John Lennon’s birthday, through December 8th, the Imagine Peace Tower, Yoko Ono’s memorial to him, sends a column of light skyward from Viðey Island, visible from much of Reykjavík on clear nights. It is a quiet, slightly unexpected piece of the city’s autumn landscape, easy to miss if you are not looking for it and oddly moving once you know the story behind it.  

What Autumn Tastes Like  

Autumn has its own particular dish, and it arrives with the first cold weeks: kjötsúpa, a hearty lamb and root vegetable soup that shows up on home stoves the moment summer’s warmth fades for good, somewhere in September. It is less a recipe than a signal, the kind of meal that tells you the season has properly turned. Around the same time, the country’s smokehouses, small wooden reykjahús found on farms throughout the countryside, begin filling with lamb for hangikjöt, smoked meat that hangs through October and November over birch wood and dried sheep dung before it is ready, a process that connects directly back to the réttir roundup just weeks earlier.  

The Lights Come Back Early  

The northern lights return to Icelandic skies as early as late August, weeks before most travelers think to start watching for them, and by September the nights are reliably dark enough for a fair chance at a display on any clear evening. We never quite take this for granted, even after a lifetime of living under these skies. Every display still feels different, and the quietest, most memorable sightings often happen without any planning at all, just stepping outside on an ordinary night and looking up. For forecasts and the best places to watch, see our guide to the northern lights in Iceland.  

Whales, Before the Season Closes  

Húsavík, the small fishing town on the north coast widely known as Iceland’s whale watching capital, keeps its boats running through autumn, with humpback and minke whales still regularly sighted in Skjálfandi Bay into October, before the season winds down for winter. Reykjavík’s tours run year-round regardless, departing from the Old Harbor in Faxaflói Bay, but the northern waters around Húsavík and Akureyri tend to offer the richer, more reliable sightings while the season still allows it.

We can book a whale watching tour for earlier rather than later in your autumn trip if it matters to you. Rougher seas become more common as the season progresses, and operators occasionally need to cancel or reschedule once the weather turns. If the north appeals, our 8-day North and East Iceland self-drive is a starting point we shape around you; it runs into September and includes a Diamond Circle day with whale watching from Húsavík.  

A Last Window for the Water  

September offers a final, often overlooked stretch of calm-water conditions before autumn’s stronger winds set in for good. The sheltered bays around Geldinganes, just outside Reykjavík, remain good for kayaking through the month, with the city skyline, Harpa Concert Hall, and Mount Esja all visible from the water, and the long golden light of early autumn evenings making a late-afternoon paddle feel like one of the better-kept secrets of the season.  

Music Takes Over as the Season Closes  

By early November, Iceland Airwaves fills bars, galleries, and concert halls across Reykjavík with several days of mostly Icelandic music, alongside a smaller international lineup, in a format that has helped launch more than a few bands now known well beyond the country’s borders. It marks, in its own way, the close of autumn’s cultural calendar and the city’s tilt toward the quieter, more inward months just ahead.  

Autumn’s Shoulder-Season Advantage 

Autumn sits in what we call the shoulder season, the calm stretch between summer’s rush and the holiday crowds of December, and the advantages run both ways. Flights and accommodation ease down from July’s peak prices, the most photographed waterfalls and beaches lose their lines of tour buses, and you can stand at Skógafoss or Reynisfjara on the South Coast and hear the water rather than the chatter of a crowd. For us and for the small towns that depend on tourism running steadily rather than only in summer, this season matters just as much from the other side of the counter: guides and guesthouses keep working, and the trip itself tends to feel less rushed and considerably more personal. 

Many of our travelers choose exactly this window. If your dates are flexible at all, late September through mid-October is usually the sweet spot: still enough daylight for a full day of sightseeing, the worst of the crowds gone, and the northern lights season already well underway. How autumn compares with the rest of the year is in our guide to the best time to visit Iceland.

A Narrow Window Before the Snow  

Autumn in Iceland does not last long, and that is rather the point of it. The festivals crowd into a few short weeks, the colors arrive and fade almost as quickly, and the country itself seems to know exactly how fleeting this stretch is, which may be why it leans into it so fully while it lasts. Come for the sheep coming home, the berries in the hills, a film in a lava tunnel, or simply the first clear night with the lights overhead. Whichever part of it you catch, you will be seeing something closer to the Iceland we live in than the one on the postcards, just for a little while before the snow takes over.