Akureyri · Things to do

Nearly all of Iceland's native flora and several thousand foreign species growing fifty kilometres short of the Arctic Circle. Open through the summer and free to walk into.

Skeletons hung in a converted harbour building, including a full blue whale, with the biology explained properly rather than sentimentally. Founded as a non-profit in 1997.

A horseshoe canyon in the north of Vatnajökull National Park, which the sagas put down to a hoofprint from Odin's horse and geologists to a glacial flood. Marked trails, birch woods and a campsite.

The former Mývatn Nature Baths at Jarðbaðshólar: milky silicate water on a ridge above the lake, open noon to ten, from 7,900 ISK. Parts of the site have been under renovation, so check before driving out.

An hour north through tunnels: a herring town that boomed, crashed and was left, with a museum about it that has won European prizes and a harbour front rebuilt around it.