The Icelandic horse has a gait no other breed on your side of the Atlantic will give you, and you can try it 30 minutes from downtown Reykjavík for the price of a nice dinner. Here is what a ride is actually like, what it costs, what to wear, and when it is not worth your afternoon.
The Icelandic horse stands roughly 132-145 cm at the withers. Call it a pony in front of an Icelander and you will get a short lecture. The breed has been isolated on the island for about a thousand years, and that isolation left it with two gaits most horses do not have.
The one you came for is tölt. It is a four-beat lateral gait where at least one hoof stays on the ground at all times. No suspension phase means no bounce. A good tölt horse can move at the speed of a fast trot while you sit still in the saddle, hands quiet, shoulders level. The party trick on Icelandic TV is a rider holding a full beer at tölt without spilling it. That is not an exaggeration, it is genuinely that smooth.
The fifth gait is skeið, the flying pace. Two-beat, very fast, ridden in short straight bursts at races. You will not do it on a tourist ride and you should not ask to.
Most visitors do a one or two hour ride from a farm within 20-45 minutes of the city. The riding farms cluster in Mosfellsdalur, on the Hafnarfjörður lava fields, out on Kjalarnes and around Hveragerði and Selfoss. Departures run several times a day, all year, and most operators offer hotel pickup in Reykjavík for an extra fee.
Be honest with yourself about the length. The one-hour ride is mostly walking in single file across a lava field, and if the group has nervous first-timers the guide will keep it at a walk the whole way. That is a fine introduction to a horse and a bad introduction to tölt. Book the two-hour ride and tell the staff at check-in that you are comfortable moving faster. They sort the group by ability and put the confident riders at the back where they can tölt on the open stretches.
These farms are easy to fit around an airport day. A morning ride and an afternoon at the Blue Lagoon, which is about 20 minutes from Keflavík, is a normal last-day plan.
Route 1 is about 1,322 km and fully paved, and there are riding farms strung along most of it. The north is the real horse country. Skagafjörður, around Varmahlíð, is the breeding heartland and the rides there feel less like a scheduled activity and more like a farm letting you tag along. Other good stops: Hella and Hvolsvöllur on the south coast between Seljalandsfoss and Vík, the lava fields around Mývatn, Eyjafjörður near Akureyri, and Fljótsdalur inland from Egilsstaðir.
Rural farms usually give you more open ground and fewer people. They also tend to be cheaper than the Reykjavík operators by EUR 20-30 for the same duration. You will need a rental car to reach them, though almost all sit on paved road or short gravel that a 2WD handles fine. The exception is highland trek meeting points, which can sit behind F-roads. Those legally require a 4x4, your insurance is void if you take a 2WD up one, and river crossings are never covered by any policy. Let the operator shuttle you in.
If you are planning the loop, a two-hour ride slots neatly into the north-coast day on a 7-day Ring Road itinerary.
Multi-day treks are a completely different product. Typically 3 to 8 days, June through August, covering 20-40 km a day across the highlands on routes like Kjölur or the country around Landmannalaugar. A loose herd of spare horses runs alongside the group and you change mount once or twice a day. Nights are in mountain huts, sleeping bag on a bunk, or in farmhouses on the softer itineraries.
This is not a beginner activity, whatever the booking page says. You need to be able to tölt and canter for hours, get on and off unaided a dozen times a day, and stay functional after a wet 30 km. Riders who overestimate themselves have a miserable second day. Figure roughly EUR 250-450 per day all in, including food, accommodation and horses, varying a lot by operator and route. Popular treks sell out 6-12 months ahead.
Mid-September brings réttir, the autumn round-up, when the horses and sheep are driven down from the highlands. A handful of farms take paying riders along. It is the best riding week of the year in Iceland and the hardest to book. Sort your accommodation around it early, because rural rooms go fast that month.
Once an Icelandic horse is exported, it is gone for good. It cannot return, not after a competition abroad, not for breeding, not ever. No horse of any breed can be imported into Iceland either. The population has been isolated so long that it has almost no immunity to diseases that are routine elsewhere, and a single infected animal could run through the national herd. Icelandic riders who compete in Europe sell or stable their horses there permanently rather than bring them home.
The same logic applies to your luggage.
Farms lend the important outer layers. Nearly all of them hand out waterproof overalls, a rain jacket and rubber riding boots at no extra cost, plus a helmet, which is mandatory at any operator worth booking. What you bring is what goes underneath.
In winter, dress warmer than you would for a walk. You are sitting still in an open field and generating no heat of your own. One extra mid-layer beyond your instinct is about right. Empty your pockets of anything loose before you mount.
Expect EUR 90-160 for a one to two hour ride, with hotel pickup from Reykjavík pushing you toward the top of that band. Three-hour and half-day rides run roughly EUR 150-250. Prices shift with season and operator, and the summer rate is usually higher than the same ride in February.
Two practical limits catch people out. Most farms cap rider weight around 110 kg out of fairness to the horses, and they do enforce it. Minimum age is commonly 6-8 for short rides and 10-12 for anything longer, with very young children restricted to lead-line paddock sessions.
Weather cancels tours in Iceland constantly, and riding is no exception. Rain and wind are fine, storms are not. Check vedur.is for the forecast and road.is (umferdin.is) before you drive out to a farm in winter, because the farm road closing is a more likely problem than the ride itself. Standard cancellation windows are 24 hours. Compare durations and departure points across tours and activities before you commit, and book the morning slot if the forecast is marginal — afternoon wind usually wins.
Skip it if you are genuinely frightened of horses. The short rides are built for absolute beginners and the staff are patient, but nervousness plus cold plus two hours is not a good afternoon. A 30-minute paddock session is the better test.
Skip it if your back, hips or knees are bad. Tölt is smooth, but mounting is awkward and the trot the horse uses to get into tölt is not smooth at all.
And skip it if you have seven days, it is your first trip, and horses are not something you actively care about. Half a day is a real cost on a Ring Road schedule. Given the choice, most first-timers get more out of Silfra snorkelling, a blue ice cave under Vatnajökull between November and March, or volcano and lava-field tours. Riding is what you add on a second trip, or on a slow week in the north. If you do care about horses, though, nothing else in the country compares — tölt is a sensation you cannot buy at home. More planning detail sits in our Iceland guides.
No. The one and two hour tours near Reykjavík are built around people who have never sat on a horse. Guides split the group by ability, put beginners at the front at a walk, and let confident riders tölt at the back. Multi-day highland treks are the opposite — you need to ride competently for hours a day before you book one.
Tölt is the Icelandic horse's four-beat lateral gait with no suspension phase, so there is no bounce to post to. On a one-hour ride you may only get a short burst of it. On a two-hour ride you will usually get several stretches, especially if you tell the staff at check-in that you are comfortable going faster.
Roughly EUR 90-160 for one to two hours, with Reykjavík hotel pickup at the higher end. Half-day rides run about EUR 150-250. Multi-day treks work out around EUR 250-450 per day including food, accommodation and horses. All of it varies by season and operator.
The breed has been isolated for around a thousand years and has almost no immunity to common equine diseases. Iceland bans the import of any horse, including its own animals that have been exported, to protect the national herd. The same biosecurity rule means your used riding gear must be new or professionally disinfected to enter the country.
Yes, farms operate all year and winter riding across snow-covered lava is excellent. The limits are daylight and weather — book a midday departure between November and February, dress warmer than you think you need to since you generate no heat in the saddle, and check vedur.is and road.is before driving out.
Most farms cap rider weight at around 110 kg for the horses' sake and they check. Minimum age is typically 6-8 years for short rides and 10-12 for longer ones, with smaller children limited to lead-line sessions in the paddock. Confirm both with the operator before booking a family group.