Renting a Camper Van in Iceland: 12 Mistakes That Cost People Money

A camper van is a great way to see Iceland. You wake up where you stopped, you eat when you are hungry, and nobody is standing at a reception desk waiting for you to check out by ten. I have lived here my whole life; I drive these roads every week, and I have watched a lot of people have the trip of their lives in a van.

I have also read a great many angry reviews. So for this article, I read them properly — Trustpilot, the TripAdvisor Iceland forum, trip reports from people who actually did it — looking for the mistakes that come up again and again. Not the theoretical ones. The ones that cost people hundreds of thousands of krónur, or cost them a night’s sleep in a freezing van outside a campsite that closed three weeks earlier.

Almost all of them are avoidable with about twenty minutes of preparation. That is what this page is for.

One note before we start: rental terms, insurance packages, fees, and campsite opening dates change constantly, and every company does things differently. Treat everything here as the questions to ask, not as a quotation. Always confirm the specifics with your rental company and with the campsite directly.

Safety first

Before anything else, bookmark three sites and check them every single morning of your trip: safetravel.is for travel alerts, vedur.is for the weather and wind, and umferdin.is for live road conditions. If something is unclear, call 1777 for road information. A camper van is a tall vehicle with a lot of surface for the wind to push against, so these are not optional readings.

1. Booking a camper for a month when the campsites are shut

This is the most common and most miserable mistake, and it catches people who did nothing wrong except assume that a country full of campsites in July is also full of campsites in October.

It is not. In July and August you have well over a hundred campsites to choose from. Closures start on the first of September, and they come fast — by mid-September most sites consider the season over, by October you are down to somewhere under forty, and through the real winter it is around twenty for the whole country. The Highlands have none at all. The Westfjords have almost none. And “open in winter” often means unstaffed, with an honesty box, no showers, and the water shut off.

I read an account from a woman who drove the south coast in November and twice arrived at a campsite in the dark, after a 4:30 pm sunset, to find it closed with no notice anywhere online. That is the pattern. There is no reliable, up-to-date national list of what is open — the sites are independently run, and they close when they feel like it.

How to avoid it:

• If you are traveling between mid-September and mid-May, plan your nights around specific named campsites, not around “we’ll find something”.
• Phone or email each one to confirm it is open on your dates. Do this a week or two before, not in March. A site that told you in spring that it opens in April may still be under snow.
• Have a second option within an hour’s drive of every planned stop, and know where it is before you set off that morning.
• Do not believe anyone — including a rental company — who tells you that a closed campsite can be used for free overnight parking. It cannot. Closed means closed.
• Honestly, if you are coming in November, December, January or February, consider whether a car and guesthouses would serve you better. A camper in deep winter is a specialist trip, not a budget one.

2. Assuming you can sleep wherever you like

You cannot, and this one is a matter of law rather than etiquette. Under the Nature Conservation Act, a traditional tent gets a limited allowance — one night, on uncultivated land, where there is no campsite nearby, and the landowner has not restricted it. Anything on wheels does not. Camper vans, motorhomes and caravans may not be slept in outside an organized campsite or an urban area without the landowner’s express permission.

The “I’m not camping, I’m just parking” argument does not work either. Sleeping in the vehicle is what’s regulated, not whether you put out a chair. Car parks, lay-bys, the gravel patch by the waterfall — none of them are legal overnight spots.

Enforcement varies by municipality, but it does happen: police or a landowner knocking on the window at two in the morning, and being made to drive to a proper campsite anyway. Municipal parking rules can carry a fine of their own, and where real damage to nature is done — off-road driving above all — the penalties in the Act are severe.

How to avoid it:

• Plan every night at a campsite. That is simply how it works here now.
• If you genuinely want to stay on a farm or private land, ask the landowner. Icelanders are not unfriendly about it, but you have to ask.
• Budget the campsite fees from the start rather than hoping to skip half of them. See mistake 10.

The rules were tightened for a reason: visitors treated the country as a free car park. Do not be the person who makes the next set of rules necessary.

3. Believing that “full insurance” means full insurance

This is the one that produces the largest bills and the angriest reviews, and it is not because the companies are behaving badly. It is because the packages are called things like “premium” and “all-risk” while excluding, almost universally, the four things most likely to happen to you in Iceland.

As a rule — and you must confirm the exact terms with your own company — the standard exclusions across the industry are:

• The undercarriage. Everything underneath the van, which is where gravel road damage lives.
• Water damage from crossing a river. Even in a 4×4 that is physically capable of it. A hydrolocked engine is a very large bill.
• A door caught by the wind. Classed as driver negligence rather than weather, which is why it survives even the top tier. See mistake 4.
• Tires, unless you specifically add tire cover.

Sand and ash damage is usually a separate add-on too, and gravel protection is sometimes included and sometimes not. One or two companies now sell a genuinely comprehensive zero-deductible waiver that covers water, underbody, and wind. They are the exception; they cost real money per day, and you should never assume you have one.

How to avoid it:

• Read the actual policy document before you arrive, not the marketing page. Ask them to email it.
• Ask four direct questions: Is the undercarriage covered? Are wind-blown doors covered? Does it include sand and ash, or is it extra? What exactly is my deductible in krónur?
• Check whether your credit card provides rental vehicle cover, and whether it extends to camper vans. Several travelers who were charged for wind damage got it back through their card.
• Decide deliberately what you are self-insuring. There is nothing wrong with taking the basic package — just do it knowing what you are carrying.

4. The door. Always the door.

If there is one uniquely Icelandic way to lose two thousand euros in one second, this is it. You pull into a viewpoint, the wind is coming from behind, you open the door, and it is torn out of your hand and folded back against the hinge. A hinge repair is typically several hundred euros to over a thousand, and a replacement door runs two to four thousand. And as covered above, it is the one damage type that almost no package covers.

A camper van is worse than a car for this, because the doors are bigger and the vehicle is taller. One traveler was quoted 350,000 ISK for a scratch smaller than a hand after the wind took the door twice while she was trying to close it. She had bought every insurance product on offer.

How to avoid it:

• Park nose into the wind. Every single time, without thinking about it. It takes ten seconds, and it is the whole solution.
• Two hands on the door, open it slowly, and never let go of it until it is shut again.
• Open one door at a time. A cross-draught through the van will take a door that would otherwise have held.
• Use the sliding side door rather than the hinged ones when you have the choice.
• Tell your passengers this on day one. Most of these bills come from someone in the back seat who did not know.

No code for this one. It costs nothing to hold the door.

5. Driving away without filming the van

Read enough camper reviews and a clear pattern emerges: damage charged at return that the renter says was already there. Sometimes they can prove it. In one case, the company’s own handover document listed the damaged door — and they charged for it anyway until the paperwork was produced.

It is made worse by how handovers actually go. The van is dirty, it is sleeting, it is dark, you have been on a plane for six hours, and there is a queue behind you. Nobody inspects anything properly. Then you drop it back at five in the morning into a key box with no one present, and there is no record of what condition it was in.

How to avoid it:

• Before you leave the lot, walk around the van filming continuously on your phone. All four sides, both bumpers, the roof, the windscreen, the mirrors, the wheels, and crouch down to get the underside. Narrate it.
• Get the check-out sheet in the frame at the start so the video is date-stamped against the paperwork.
• Film the inside too: the mattress, the upholstery, the stove, the fridge, the water tap. Interior damage and cleaning charges are their own category.
• If the van is too dirty to inspect, say so and ask them to note it. If it is dark, use your torch and film that.
• Do the same walkaround on return, and prefer a return during staffed hours with someone signing it off. If you must drop after hours, film the van in the return bay.
• Check the fuel gauge photograph too. Fuel disputes over one bar are surprisingly common.

Five minutes at each end. It is the single highest-value habit on this page.

6. Assuming “has a heater” means what you think it means

The word “heater” is doing a lot of work in camper van listings, and it covers three completely different things.

• A diesel parking heater (Webasto or similar). This is the real thing. It burns a little diesel from the main tank, runs off a leisure battery, works with the engine off, and is designed to run all night. This is what you want.
• Gas heating. Less common for space heating and generally not something to leave running unattended overnight unless it is specifically built for it.
• Engine heat only. The cheapest vans. The van is warm while you are driving and cold the moment you stop. Some listings still call this “heating”.

Even with a proper diesel heater, there is a catch that surprises people: the leisure battery it runs from is recharged by driving, or by plugging into campsite electricity. Several companies specify a couple of hours of driving a day to keep it topped up. If your itinerary is short hops and long stops, you can flatten the battery and wake up cold.

How to avoid it:

• Ask the company directly: is it an independent diesel heater that runs with the engine off? Get the answer in writing before you book.
• Ask how the leisure battery is charged and how much daily driving it needs.
• Book campsites with an electricity hookup for shoulder-season and winter nights, and pay the extra thousand krónur or so. It charges everything and lets you run a small electric heater.
• Do not idle the engine overnight for heat. Icelandic air-quality rules discourage leaving a vehicle running while stationary; most campsites forbid it outright; it wastes a tank of fuel, and it is a carbon monoxide risk in a small van.
• Bring a proper sleeping bag rated colder than you think you need, a hat, and a hot water bottle. Even in August, nights get cold enough that people sleep in hats.
• Crack a window or a roof vent at night. Two people breathing in a small metal box produces a remarkable amount of condensation, and damp bedding is its own kind of misery.

7. Booking a 2WD camper for a highland trip

People plan Landmannalaugar and Þórsmörk into a camper itinerary, only to find out at the counter that the van they booked isn’t allowed to go there—or worse, find out afterward that the insurance is voided.

The mountain roads, marked with an F, are for four-wheel drive only, and that is enforced by your rental contract as much as by the road signs. Contracts typically carry a penalty of several hundred euros per incident on top of voiding all cover. Many companies also ban even their 4×4 campers from specific numbered roads, and some ban a handful of non-F roads too. The list is in your contract, and it is worth actually reading.

Then there is timing. F-roads open when the snow lets them, not on a date. The earliest routes — Kjölur and F208 into Landmannalaugar — average around the first days of June. The long interior crossings like Sprengisandur average early July. The second half of July is the only stretch when you can assume nearly all of them are passable. They start closing again from September, sometimes overnight after one storm.

And rivers. Even in a 4×4 camper, crossing a river is at your own risk almost everywhere. F-roads have rivers on them. That is the trap: the road is permitted, the crossing is not covered.

How to avoid it:

• Decide first whether you actually need the highlands. Most first Iceland trips do not — the Ring Road, Snæfellsnes and the south coast are all paved and all extraordinary.
• If you do want them, book a 4×4 camper and travel in July or early August.
• Check umferdin.is for F-road status the morning of, not the week before.
• For Þórsmörk, leave the van in Hvolsvöllur and take the highland bus. No camper of any kind should be attempting that route.
• If you arrive at a river and are not certain, turn around. That is not cowardice; it is the correct call, and every Icelander would do the same.

8. Underestimating the wind while driving

Wind is the real hazard here, not ice, and a camper van is the most exposed vehicle. It is a box with a large flat side, and gusts routinely run half again as strong as the average wind in the forecast. Camper vans do get blown off Icelandic roads, and it is not rare.

Weather and road warnings here routinely single out campers and other high-sided vehicles, and a camper starts to feel the road at wind speeds well short of storm territory — from about 10 to 15 meters per second on exposed stretches. Local drivers, I know, start rescheduling a day above about 15. Above 20, a camper has no business being on an exposed road.

How to avoid it:

• Look at the wind number on vedur.is before you plan the day’s driving, and check the gust number, not just the average.
• If the forecast is above 15 m/s along your route, change the route or change the day. Being flexible is the whole advantage of a camper — use it.
• Yellow warning means think hard. Orange means stay put. Red means do not drive, and no photograph is worth arguing with that.
• Mountain passes and the mouths of fjords accelerate the wind well above the regional forecast. The Westfjords in particular.
• Slow down. A camper at 90 km/h in a crosswind and the same camper at 60 km/h are two different vehicles.

9. Planning far too many kilometers a day

This one does not cost money; it costs the trip. People look at the Ring Road, see about 1,320 kilometers, divide by seven days, and think it is comfortable. In a camper, in Iceland, it is not.

A camper is slower than a car, heavier in the wind, and less pleasant to hurry. Campsites do not hold pitches — if you leave in the morning you lose your spot — so every day ends with finding somewhere new. Reception and shower blocks often shut around ten in the evening. In the shoulder season it is dark by five. And the whole point of the vehicle is that you are not on a schedule.

How to avoid it:

• Cap it at around 200 to 250 kilometers a day and treat that as generous, not restrictive.
• Two nights in one place, more than once. Waking up somewhere you already know is the best part of van travel.
• Arrive at the campsite before the facilities close. Showering and cooking in daylight makes an enormous difference to how the trip feels.
• If you have seven days, do the south coast and Snæfellsnes properly instead of the whole Ring Road badly.
• Sleep in. You are on holiday. The waterfall will be there at eleven, and there will be fewer people.

10. Budgeting for the van and forgetting everything else

A camper looks like it removes the accommodation line from your budget. It reduces it, but it does not remove it, and the extras add up faster than people expect.

As a rough guide for 2026, and these move around:

• Campsite fees: around 2,000 to 2,800 ISK per adult per night, more in Reykjavík. Note that it is usually charged per person, which makes families more expensive than a couple in a large motorhome.
• Lodging tax: 400 ISK, charged per unit per night, not per person. Several rental blogs get this wrong.
• Electricity hookup: roughly 1,000 to 1,500 ISK where offered.
• Showers: often included, but frequently 300 to 800 ISK for about five minutes. Carry coins.
• Laundry: around 500 to 900 ISK a load, and the same again to dry.
• Fuel: a compact camper uses roughly 10 to 12 liters per 100 km, and a 4×4 more like 11 to 14. That is somewhere around 130 to 190 liters for the Ring Road alone, before any detours.
• The kilometer fee. Since January 2026, every vehicle pays a per-kilometer road charge — 6.95 ISK per kilometer for anything up to 3.5 tonnes, petrol, diesel and electric alike. It usually appears as a separate line at booking rather than in the headline daily rate, and it adds roughly 9,000 ISK over the Ring Road. Fuel duty came down when it came in, so it is not purely an extra, but it is a line most people do not budget for.

Two things worth knowing about fuel. Diesel is more expensive than petrol in Iceland, which is the opposite of most of Europe, so a diesel camper is not automatically the cheaper option. And the price difference between forecourts is real — usually 5 to 10 percent between the mainstream chains, and more like 15 to 20 percent comparing a discount pump against a dear rural station — so it is worth paying attention to where you fill up.

Read my tips on how to save money in Iceland. Sign up for my discount codes to save money on tours and travel services.

How to avoid it:

• Budget the campsites at full price for every night of the trip and treat any savings as a bonus.
• Consider the Camping Card if — and only if — you are doing ten or more nights and your route lines up with the participating sites. It is around €179, covers two adults and up to four children for 28 nights, allows a maximum of four consecutive nights at any one site, and expires on 15 September. It does not cover electricity, showers, laundry, or the lodging tax. Check the current site list before you buy, because the sites skew rural.
• Shop at Bónus, Nettó, Prís or Krónan and cook in the van. This is where a camper genuinely saves you serious money, far more than the accommodation does.
• Carry a few 100 ISK coins for showers.
• Tell your bank you are traveling. Repeated fuel-station pre-authorizations have triggered fraud holds on more than one traveler’s card in the middle of nowhere.

Read my tips on how to pay for things in Iceland.

11. Not understanding the toilet and water situation before you book

Most camper vans in Iceland do not have a toilet. Not the compact ones, and not many of the mid-size ones either. People book assuming “camper” implies a bathroom and discover otherwise on the first night, in the rain, at two in the morning.

Where a van does have a chemical toilet or a grey water tank, there are rules about emptying them. Waste goes to designated disposal sites only — never onto the ground, into a watercourse, or down a storm drain. There is an official list of approved disposal points; many campsites have them, and some petrol stations do too. Use only toilet paper made for travel toilets and only biodegradable cleaning products, and never rinse a toilet cassette with a drinking water hose.

How to avoid it:

• Ask explicitly whether the van has a toilet. Do not infer it from photographs.
• If it does not, plan your nights at campsites with a proper facilities block, and know where the door is before you go to bed.
• If it does, note where the disposal sites are along your route and empty it regularly rather than when it is full.
• Ask whether the emptying fee is included, and what the charge is if you return the van without emptying it. It can be substantial.
• Bring a head torch. Campsite facility blocks are not always well lit and Iceland is very dark in the shoulder season.

12. Driving into the sand on the south coast

On the black sand plains of the south — around Vík, Mýrdalssandur and out toward Skaftafell — a strong wind lifts volcanic sand and ash off the ground and sandblasts anything driving through it. It strips paint, pits glass, and frosts the headlights. It takes minutes. Paint damage typically runs 100,000 to 400,000 ISK, and etched glass another 80,000 to 250,000, and a badly hit van needing a full respray plus glass gets close to a million.

Standard insurance does not cover it. Sand and ash protection is a separate add-on, usually a modest daily amount, and it is one of the very few add-ons I think is genuinely worth buying for a South Coast trip. A camper presents a lot of surface to sandblast.

How to avoid it:

• Add sand and ash cover if you are driving the South Coast, and especially in spring and autumn when it is worst.
• Watch the road warnings. Sandfok is the Icelandic word for blowing sand, and when it turns up on umferdin. is or on a roadside message board, it means turn around or wait it out. Icelanders do not drive into it. Visitors regularly do.
• Check umferdin.is before crossing Mýrdalssandur in high wind.
• If you are caught in it, pull well off the road, face the van into the wind, and sit it out.

Smaller things worth knowing

• Headlights stay on day and night, all year. Automatic headlights often leave the tail lights off in daylight, which is both illegal and dangerous in blowing snow or dust. Switch them on manually and check.
• Gas bottles are exchanged, not refilled. Larger petrol stations and hardware shops handle the swap, but it is not uniform — ask your rental company which chains their bottles come from before you set off. Foreign bottles and fittings are generally not compatible, so do not bring your own. Close the bottle valve while driving, and never cook with the door catching the wind: a gust blows the flame out while the gas keeps flowing.
• Off-road driving is completely banned and actively prosecuted, with fines running from several hundred thousand krónur up to a million. Driving onto a beach, a lava field, or just around a puddle beside the track all count. No insurance covers it.
• Speed limits: 90 on paved rural roads, 80 on gravel, 50 through towns and on single-lane bridges. Slow down before the pavement turns to gravel, not after.
• Single-lane bridges: whoever is closer has the right of way. Look ahead and make your intention obvious.
• Sheep. If a lamb is on the opposite side of the road from the ewe, it will bolt across in front of you. Assume it will. If you hit livestock, you pay the farmer.
• License and weight: a standard category B license covers vehicles up to 3,500 kg. Nearly all rental campers are built under that on purpose, but check the registration document on a large motorhome, especially a six-berth loaded with water and passengers.
• Roadside assistance is usually subcontracted, and in practice you may have to pay for recovery on the spot and claim it back later. Ask what the process actually is and have a card with headroom on it.
• The sulfur smell is not the van. It is the hot water. It is normal, and it is harmless.

Which of my camper partners to choose

I work with these companies because readers come back and tell me it went well. I get a small commission when you use my codes, and it costs you less than booking direct. Terms and fleet details change, so always confirm the specifics with the company.

Go Campers

A large, established Icelandic fleet, from compact two-person vans through family campers to 4×4 highland vehicles. Good if you want breadth of choice and a company with proper systems behind it. The discount starts at 5% and rises with the length of the rental, up to 25% on very long trips, and it applies automatically through my link — no code to remember. Go Campers discount.

Happy Campers

A well-run operation with vans from two-person models up to family sizes, and a following among people who want something straightforward rather than fancy. The useful part is that the discounts stack: my code STUCK5 combines with their length-of-rental and book-early discounts, which is how you get toward 25%. The Happy Campers rental hack.

Konvin

Smaller, newer fleet, transparent pricing and a friendly operation. A good choice if you are watching the budget and you would rather deal with people than a call center. Readers get 10%, and the code comes through my newsletter. Rent a camper van with Konvin.

Frequently asked questions about renting a camper van in Iceland

One last thing

Everything above is written to keep the van boring. That is the goal. A camper van trip goes wrong in the ways people write reviews about, and it goes right in ways nobody bothers to write down — coffee at a kitchen table you drove to a fjord, a nap at two in the afternoon because you felt like it, going to sleep with the sound of the sea against the van.

Sort the insurance, film the van, park into the wind, book fewer kilometres than you think you should, and then stop planning. You are on holiday. The van is there to let you take your time, not to give you another schedule to keep.