“We just arrived in the middle of a snowstorm and everything was white, snow everywhere,” wrote photographer Julien Ratel of his winter visit to Akureyri, the largest town in North Iceland. His photographs show cars buried to their windows and brightly painted wooden houses glowing through the falling snow.
Akureyri, the capital of North Iceland
Akureyri sits at the head of Eyjafjörður, a long fjord on Iceland’s north coast, ringed by mountains. With about 20,000 residents it is the country’s fifth most populous municipality and the largest outside the Reykjavík capital region, which is why Icelanders call it the capital of the north. It lies about 390 km from Reykjavík along Route 1, the Ring Road, and only around 100 km south of the Arctic Circle.
Settlement began in 1778, and King Christian VII granted the town its charter in 1786. Today Akureyri has a busy harbour, the hillside church Akureyrarkirkja and the Akureyri Botanical Garden, where a surprising range of plants grows outdoors this far north.
Winter weather in Akureyri
For a town so close to the Arctic Circle, Akureyri’s winters are milder than many visitors expect. In January the average daytime high is about 2.7°C and the average low about −3.5°C, although the record low is −23°C. Snow is the defining feature: the ground is usually white from late October until April, and the town records snow on about 95 days a year.
Storms like the one Ratel met can drop a heavy load of snow in a short time, as the buried cars in his pictures show, and the town digs itself out and carries on.
Colourful houses in the snow
Like many Icelandic towns, Akureyri is full of timber and corrugated-iron houses painted red, yellow, green and blue. Under heavy snow those colours do the work of landmarks: road markings and garden edges disappear, but a red wall or a yellow gable still shows where one home ends and the next begins.
Ratel’s photographs make the most of this. A red two-storey house, a pale porch and an orange window glowing behind snowy branches give the series warmth, and remind you that ordinary life carries on indoors while the storm fills the street.
Visiting Akureyri in winter
Akureyri Airport has domestic flights from Reykjavík, which take far less time than the drive and are the easier choice in deep winter. If you do drive the Ring Road, check Iceland’s official road information and SafeTravel before you set off, since mountain passes in the north can close in storms.
For another city transformed by snowfall, see Vivienne Gucwa’s New York photographs, and for snow meeting a train, watch the Salisbury train film.
Related reading:
- Ten Iceland Experiences: Waterfalls, Glaciers, Hot Springs and City Life
- Vatnajökull and Its National Park: Icelandic Ice, Caves and Landscapes
- Iceland Aurora Films: Northern Lights from Sixty Locations
- Blue Iceland: Andy Lee’s Infrared Landscape Photography
- Crystalapse in Iceland: A Landscape Film with a Personal Ending
- Stian Rekdal’s Iceland Time-Lapse: From a Road Journey to a Film
- Strokkur Geyser: From a Blue Dome to a Column of Spray
- Eyjafjallajökull in Time-Lapse: Sean Stiegemeier’s May 2010 Film
- Iceland’s Blue Lagoon: Geothermal Water and the Landscape Around It
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