The Odyssey Iceland Film Locations Tour

Every odyssey has a beginning.

Arrive in Reykjavík and get your first glimpse of the landscapes that have made Iceland a favourite location for filmmakers.

For Odysseus, leaving Troy marks the beginning of a voyage into an unknown world of gods, monsters and forces beyond his control. Your Iceland journey begins on rather safer ground, but over the coming days, the road leads into landscapes that feel made for an epic.

Overnight in Reykjavík 

Leave Reykjavík for the Golden Circle and a day shaped by some of Iceland’s most powerful natural forces.

At Þingvellir National Park, walk through a landscape created by the movement of the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates. Continue to the Geysir Geothermal Area, where Strokkur sends boiling water high into the air, before reaching Gullfoss, where the Hvítá river drops into a dramatic canyon.

These are not filming locations from The Odyssey, but they provide a fitting introduction to the elemental Iceland that Nolan chose for his epic: earth moving beneath your feet, water in constant motion and a landscape that never feels entirely still.

Overnight in Hella area

Today the connection between Iceland and The Odyssey becomes real.

Travel east along the South Coast, stopping first at Seljalandsfoss, where a path leads behind the falling water.

Continue to Reynisfjara, where black volcanic sand, basalt cliffs and the Atlantic create one of Iceland’s most dramatic coastlines. The beauty comes with real power: the waves here are unpredictable, and visitors must always follow local safety warnings.

Then comes the highlight for fans of the film: Hjörleifshöfði.

The isolated mountain rises directly from an immense black-sand plain. Nolan chose this landscape to portray Hades, the Underworld. In the story, Odysseus travels there to seek the prophet Tiresias and learn what awaits him on his journey home. The production filmed the sequence around Hjörleifshöfði’s black sands and caves.

There is a particularly Nolan-like twist: these scenes were filmed during the Icelandic summer, when darkness barely arrives. Instead of creating Hades through conventional darkness, the landscape itself gives the sequence its strange, otherworldly character.

For film fans, this is the moment when the Iceland journey meets the world seen on screen.

Overnight in the Kirkjubæjarklaustur area

Continue east into the great glacier landscapes of Southeast Iceland.

At Skaftafell, immense glaciers descend from Vatnajökull towards the lowlands. Continue to the quieter waters of Fjallsárlón Glacier Lagoon before reaching Jökulsárlón, where icebergs break away from Breiðamerkurjökull and drift slowly through the lagoon towards the Atlantic.

Across the road, pieces of ice are carried back onto the black volcanic shore at Diamond Beach.

These are not confirmed Odyssey filming locations. Instead, they extend the journey into the kind of vast, elemental Icelandic landscape that makes the country such a natural setting for myth and cinema.

After the darkness of Hades, the world opens again into ice, water and enormous horizons.

Overnight in the Kirkjubæjarklaustur area

Travel west and stop at Skógafoss, one of Iceland’s great waterfalls, where water drops 60 metres from the former sea cliffs.

At the LAVA Show, see real molten lava and learn how the volcanic forces beneath Iceland continue to create and reshape the country.

Then return to the story of the film around Landeyjahöfn and the surrounding black-sand coast.

Landeyjahöfn served as an important maritime and logistical base for the Icelandic production, supporting work involving the film’s full-scale ship. Other Icelandic filming locations included Hjörleifshöfði, the Markarfljót area and Snæfellsnes.

Look out across the Atlantic towards the Westman Islands, rising from the sea on the horizon. After several days following the landscapes of Odysseus’s Icelandic world, the route now turns back towards Reykjavík.

Overnight in Reykjavík

Every odyssey eventually leads home.

Depart Iceland after a journey through waterfalls, geothermal landscapes, black-sand shores and glaciers – and through a part of the real Iceland that Christopher Nolan transformed into the mythological world of The Odyssey.

You have stood beside the black sands that became Hades, travelled through the South Iceland landscapes surrounding the production and followed a route shaped around one of the oldest adventure stories ever told.

The film journey ends here. The stories go home with you.