7 Remote Iceland Hotels So Far Out You'll Only Hear the Wind
Iceland's most interesting hotels are not in Reykjavík. They sit at the end of gravel roads and fjord passes, hours from the nearest town, with nothing but the wind and the ocean on the other side of the window. This is the Iceland that builds the trip worth writing home about — far enough out that the weather is part of the experience, close enough to glaciers, black beaches and hot springs that you never run out of reasons to leave the hotel.
Here are seven verified remote hotels in Iceland, each chosen because the landscape around it is a reason to stay rather than just a reason to drive past.
1.Eleven Deplar Farm, Troll PeninsulaView on Booking.com ↗
Location: Fljót valley, Troll Peninsula, north Iceland
Price: Ultra-luxury
Eleven Deplar Farm is the most famous remote hotel in Iceland. It sits on the Troll Peninsula in a converted 15th-century sheep farm with just thirteen rooms, quiet by design rather than by accident. The building is wrapped in a turf roof and floor-to-ceiling glass, and inside is a five-thousand-square-foot spa, a geothermal indoor-outdoor pool, and a kitchen focused on local ingredients. Each group gets a dedicated experience manager for the entire stay, who also acts as your guide — heli-skiing, sea kayaking and fly fishing in season, with the menu shifting by weather. It was named on Condé Nast's Best Hotels in the World list in 2023 and it still sets the standard for remote luxury in the country.
2.Hotel Búðir, Snæfellsnes PeninsulaView on Booking.com ↗
Location: Búðir, Snæfellsnes Peninsula
Price: Luxury
Hotel Búðir is about a two-hour drive from Reykjavík but in character it feels much further. The hotel sits on a remote lava field next to a sandy beach and a tiny black timber church that is one of the most photographed buildings in Iceland. Originally a seventeenth-century trading post, the property has been rebuilt as a boutique hotel with twenty-eight individually designed rooms and minimalist Icelandic interiors. The on-site restaurant has been called "the Mecca of Icelandic cooking" and draws day-trippers from Reykjavík on its own merits. For a first-time Iceland trip that wants one remote night without driving halfway across the country, Hotel Búðir is probably the best value on this list.
3.Hotel Djúpavík, WestfjordsView on Booking.com ↗
Location: Djúpavík, Strandir Coast, Westfjords
Price: Upper mid-range
Hotel Djúpavík is the most unusual stay on the list. It sits on Iceland's remote Strandir Coast in a 1930s former herring factory — once the largest concrete structure in Iceland, built to process herring when the local industry was at its peak. When the herring collapsed, the factory was abandoned for decades. It has since been converted into an off-grid lodge, with the factory itself preserved as a visitable part of the property. Getting there is part of the story: you drive along narrow coastal roads that are often empty for hours at a time. The hotel is closed in winter, so plan a summer or late-spring visit.
4.Hotel Flokalundur, WestfjordsView on Booking.com ↗
Location: Vatnsfjörður, south Westfjords
Price: Mid-range
Hotel Flokalundur is a small family-run hotel in the Vatnsfjörður fjord on the southern coast of the Westfjords. It is the kind of place where the owners can tell you which gravel roads are passable, which waterfalls are worth a detour, and where the hot springs are. It is a practical base for exploring Látrabjarg (Europe's westernmost cliffs and a major seabird colony) and the beaches at Rauðasandur, both of which are among the most dramatic landscapes in the country and almost nobody is there.
5.Hotel Laugarhóll, WestfjordsView on Booking.com ↗
Location: Bjarnarfjörður valley, Strandir
Price: Mid-range
Hotel Laugarhóll is another small family-run country hotel, this time deep in the green and sparsely populated Bjarnarfjörður valley. The setting is classic Strandir — rolling grassland, mountains dropping straight into fjords, and an outdoor geothermal pool next to the hotel. If the Westfjords are the most remote part of mainland Iceland, the Strandir coast is the most remote part of the Westfjords, and this hotel is one of the only reasonable bases in the region. It is a quiet, slow trip of a hotel — build around it.
6.Vogafjós Guesthouse, Lake MývatnView on Booking.com ↗
Location: Shore of Lake Mývatn, north Iceland
Price: Mid-range
Vogafjós Guesthouse has twenty-six rooms built on the shore of Lake Mývatn in northern Iceland, where one of the most geothermally active corners of the country happens to also be one of the best bases for a driving trip. The café is known for its geothermal-baked rye bread — dough buried in the hot ground and left to cook for the day — and its proximity to the Mývatn Nature Baths, Dimmuborgir lava formations, and Dettifoss waterfall makes it a natural stopover on a longer Ring Road itinerary. Less luxurious than the Troll Peninsula or Snæfellsnes options but in a genuinely memorable setting.
7.Fosshotel Glacier Lagoon, Vatnajökull National ParkView on Booking.com ↗
Location: Hnappavellir, between Skaftafell and Jökulsárlón
Price: Upper mid-range
Fosshotel Glacier Lagoon is a 125-room modern hotel between Skaftafell National Park and the Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon in the south-east. Rooms are minimalist with high ceilings and large windows facing either the mountains or the ocean. The restaurant seats 180 people with panoramic views of the surrounding glacier landscape and serves Icelandic fusion cooking. It is not the smallest or most boutique option on the list, but it is the most practical base for visiting Diamond Beach, Jökulsárlón and the ice caves, and it is Green Key certified as part of the first fully sustainability-certified hotel chain in Iceland.
If you are building a remote Iceland trip, a few practical things. Distances are deceptive — what looks like two hours on the map can become four when the weather turns, and the Westfjords in particular have slow gravel-road sections that you cannot push. Book well ahead, especially for the smaller family-run hotels where there are only a handful of rooms. And do not try to do the whole country from Reykjavík — pick one or two regions, base yourself remote, and let the landscape do the work.
Not sure which region suits your trip? Try our AI chatbot on the homepage — tell it how many days you have and what kind of landscape you are after, and we'll help you shortlist remote hotels in the right corner of Iceland.
If you are thinking of Iceland as part of a wider North Atlantic trip, we also have guides to the best northern lights hotels in Iceland, summer in the Faroe Islands and Lofoten in Norway.
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