Can you see the Northern Lights from Reykjavik?

City lights wash them out. Most people drive out of town with a guide, often to dark spots under an hour outside Reykjavik.

Is the Northern Lights tour guaranteed on the Iceland Experience?

No one can guarantee the aurora. The tour night is chosen from the forecast a day or two ahead, and if the sky closes in, you go out again on another night at no charge.

Seeing the Northern Lights in Iceland: What It Feels Like

Q: What do you need to see the Northern Lights?

Clear skies, solar activity and distance from light pollution, all on the same night. Cloud cover is the biggest obstacle.

You can watch the sun come up over the Sahara, see it go down over Santorini, and count the Milky Way from a desert camp, and still feel like you're warming up. The Northern Lights are a different kind of beautiful, and a lot of people are surprised by how hard it hits them.

When can you see the Northern Lights in Iceland? The season runs September through March, and October through February is the peak. You need three things on the same night: clear skies, solar activity and real darkness, which means driving out past the lights of Reykjavik with a guide who reads the forecast.

Key facts

Season: September to March, with the best odds from October to February.
What you need: clear skies, solar activity, and distance from light pollution.
Where to watch: out of the city, away from Reykjavik's lights, at a spot your guide picks for the night's forecast.
Our trip: the Iceland Experience runs in early March and includes a guided Northern Lights tour, chosen night by night from the forecast.

The Science of Awe

The emotion people feel under the aurora isn't unusual. Researchers at UC Berkeley, including psychologist Dacher Keltner, have spent years studying awe, the feeling you get in front of something vast, and how it quiets the self-focused chatter in your head.

What an Aurora Night Is Like

Green and purple Northern Lights over a still lake and dark hills in Iceland Photo: Jonatan Pie / Unsplash

You drive out of Reykjavik after dark to a spot your guide has picked because it sits far from any light pollution. It's cold, well below freezing in winter, and what matters most is a clear sky, because cloud is what hides the aurora.

Often it starts small: a faint green glow low on the northern horizon, easy to mistake for a cloud. On a strong night that glow grows brighter and wider until it spreads across the sky in green, sometimes with purple and white at the edges. It moves like something alive. Curtains of light ripple from one side of the sky to the other.

Why It Brings People to Tears

Green aurora borealis curving above snowy cliffs and a frozen stream in Iceland Photo: Jonatan Pie / Unsplash

The tears usually have little to do with how pretty it is. They come from somewhere deeper. The Northern Lights happen when charged particles from the sun hit the gases in Earth's atmosphere, and that has been going on for billions of years. You're watching the same show that lit the sky long before people existed.

The universe is putting on a light show, and you happen to be standing on the right rock at the right time. You feel tiny and lucky, both at once. That mix is exactly what awe is.

The Practical Magic

Green Northern Lights over a dark empty country road in rural Iceland Photo: Jonatan Pie / Unsplash

Iceland's Northern Lights season runs September through March, with the best viewing from October to February. You need clear skies, solar activity and distance from light pollution, all on the same night, and no one can promise you all of it.

That's why our Iceland Experience keeps its evenings flexible. The aurora night is picked from the forecast a day or two ahead, and if the sky closes in, you go out again on another night. Even on a cloudy week, the waterfalls, the glacier and the Blue Lagoon make the trip worth it.

Want the rest of the country too? Read my full Iceland travel guide and our 6-day Iceland itinerary. You deserve one night where the sky does all the work.

6X Condé Nast Traveler Top Travel Specialist with 65+ countries visited across all 7 continents.