In response to a question about Iceland Airwaves.

Yes even though Airwaves is out of the main tourist season, the festival is so popular that the city fills up again for a few days. Therefor all the tour companies are on full speed.

I was guiding during the festival a couple of years ago. At times it was a bit difficult to get people going in the morning as they were generally thoroughly hung over. But I can promise you a walk out on a glacier is a very good hangover remedy.

The private bus lines have different summer and winter schedules and many locations only are serviced during the summer. Often this is because the highland roads are closed during winter. You can try and make sense of the rather complicated network on bsi.is.

However there are plenty of bus day tours offered from Reykjavík all year long, especially during the Iceland Airwaves festival, so it should be no problem to find something other than the festival to do.

Also the Reykjavík public bus system recently began servicing much of southwest Iceland. This means that you can take a normal scheduled public bus from Reykjavík to the brand new Landeyjarhöfn harbour for only 1400 ISK. From there you have a 40min and 1150 ISK ferry ride to Vestmannaeyjar (used to be 3hrs from Þorlákshöfn harbour). You can also fly with Ernir for between 7 and 20000 ISK.

Oh and by the way Vestmannaeyjar is one of the most beautiful places in the world. You could also go crazy and skip the Iceland Airwaves and go to Iceland’s greatest party “Þjóðhátíð in Vestmannaeyjar”. It is a festival with over 10k guests every year. You won’t get the hipster music of IA, but you’ll get classic Icelandic pop bands and a real Icelandic crowd.

Here’s last year’s official video: