Iceland · Austurland
Where to Stay in Egilsstaðir, Austurland
Egilsstaðir is the main town of eastern Iceland, set on the banks of the Lagarfljót river in Austurland.
Find your area →
Where to stay in Egilsstaðir
Where you base yourself shapes the visit — here's the character of each area.
Rooms sit close to the river. Most of Egilsstaðir's beds gather in the compact centre near the bridge over the Lagarfljót, a short walk from the shops and services that draw the whole of Austurland, and the rest spread out along the roads where the town thins into farmland. Pick by what you want at the door.
The centre puts you among the stores and the bus links of eastern Iceland, the riverside edge faces the long water of the Lagarfljót and the wooded shore beyond, and the outer roads trade the bustle for quiet and a fast start toward the rest of the Eastern Region. Choose the centre to walk everywhere, or the river edge for a slower base on the banks of the Lagarfljót.
About Egilsstaðir
The east runs through it.
What is Egilsstaðir known for?
Egilsstaðir stands as the unofficial capital of the Eastern Region, the road and service hub where the valleys of Austurland gather their trade, set on the banks of the Lagarfljót river in eastern Iceland. The town came up late. It grew from farmland in the twentieth century into the place that keeps this corner of the country supplied, schooled and connected.
What are the main landmarks in Egilsstaðir?
The river is the sight here. Egilsstaðir gives onto the long reach of the Lagarfljót, the lake-like river that runs the length of the valley below the town, while the place itself keeps the workaday face of a service centre rather than a row of monuments. The draws lie on the water and the land around.
The wooded shore of the Lagarfljót edges the valley, and the roads of Austurland fan out from the town toward the fjords and highlands of eastern Iceland.
What is the history of Egilsstaðir?
The town is young. Egilsstaðir was chartered in the twentieth century, taking its name and its start in 1947 from the farm that stood on the banks of the Lagarfljót, and the broad valley around it gave the level ground that the steep fjord shores of the east mostly lacked. The land did the rest.
Roads came down the valleys to meet at the river crossing, farm produce gathered at the new settlement, and the cluster of stores by the water slowly grew into the trading hub for the whole of Austurland. The place built outward from there. Services, schools and an airport followed as the farmland filled in, and the town held its role as the meeting point of the roads of eastern Iceland.
The river stayed at its centre. The Lagarfljót remained the line the settlement was named and laid out along, leaving Egilsstaðir the steady anchor of the Eastern Region and the unofficial capital of the east.
Where is Egilsstaðir?
The valley opens wide here. Egilsstaðir sits on the banks of the Lagarfljót, the long lake-like river running down the broad valley of eastern Iceland, on a stretch of flat farmed ground where the land lies open before the fjords cut in to the coast. The river is the spine of it all.
The Lagarfljót threads the valley from the highlands to the sea, the wooded slopes climb away on either side, and from the town the roads of Austurland branch out into the high country that walls this corner off from the rest of the island.
What is the climate of Egilsstaðir?
The inland valley sets the weather. Held back from the open coast along the Lagarfljót, Egilsstaðir runs drier and warmer in summer than the fjord shores of eastern Iceland, with cool short summers, long cold winters and snow that lingers in the valley well into spring. In this inland valley the seasons swing to extremes.
Far up in the north Atlantic, the town moves between long bright summer days and dim winter ones, and the shelter of the valley around the Lagarfljót keeps the worst of the coastal storms off the settlement.
How do you get to Egilsstaðir?
Most arrive by road or short flight. Egilsstaðir sits on the ring road that circles Iceland, a long drive east from Reykjavík across the interior, and its airport on the edge of town takes domestic flights that cut the journey from the capital to a fraction of the drive. The roads gather here.
From the town the routes of Austurland run out to the eastern fjords and up the Lagarfljót valley, making Egilsstaðir the road junction for the whole of eastern Iceland.
Good for
Updated July 2026