While we were there, the sun set around 10:30pm. Here is a picture from our hotel in Reykjavik taken at 10:15pm:
The sun is setting on the other side of the hotel behind us. We only see the reflection of the sunset in the window on the buildings across the parking lot. Notice also the rainbow to the right of the building. Somewhere behind us it’s raining. While the sun goes down, it really just dips below the horizon and it never really gets fully dark, even in early August. The latitude is approximately that of Fairbanks, Alaska.
The summer season is very short in Iceland. Snow is still on the ground in the highlands in June. Sometimes it snows already again at the end of August, but definitely in September. While we were there, from end of July through beginning of August, it was as cold as the high 30ies in the mornings and it sometimes warmed up to the low 60ies. We saw the sun a few times, but it was mostly cloudy and sometimes very windy, with gusts up to 40 miles an hour.
That is enough wind to blow your hiking poles sideways when you lift them up, and a time or two it almost blew me over. The wind was most prevalent on exposed trails and ridges, of course.
In the video below you can see the wind whipping Trisha’s pants as she hikes along the ridge with the steam clouds drifting by.
Here is another one:
Here you can see the fierceness of the wind as it blows the steam plume over the trail. You might turn on the sound on your computer to hear it. The person in the picture is our guide Jonas.
Welcome to Iceland in the middle of summer.