The Hollywood Sights of Iceland   

Another fun fact: The “Arrowhead Mountain” from Game of Thrones is locally known as Kirkjufell.

Over the past two decades, Iceland has become a well-established filming location for international film and television productions. Its dramatic landscapes, experienced local crews, and competitive reimbursement scheme have helped attract major studios and long-running projects from around the world.

For a full list of productions filmed in Iceland, check out Film in Iceland!

Thank you, Walter Mitty!

Ben Stiller, the director of the 2013 blockbuster The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, was among the first to discover Iceland has an all-around location. Scenes set to be in Afghanistan were filmed on the desolate Breiðamerkursandur, and the film even uses the Vatnajökull Glacier to represent Greenland’s ice cap.

The scene in which the titular character, Walter Mitty, skateboards down a winding road into a valley is shot in Seyðisfjörður, East Iceland. Later in the film, Walter visits a large waterfall in Nepal, filmed at Skógafoss, an easily accessible waterfall in South Iceland.

Few films travel the length of Walter Mitty, but the film showed Hollywood the extent of possibilities in Iceland. Director Christopher Nolan, who filmed both “Batman Begins” (2005) and “Interstellar” (2014) in southern Iceland, says Iceland is “one of the few places in the world where you can get two or three very different, extreme looks, within the space of a couple of miles.”

Stranger things meets Háifoss

One of the final scenes of the fifth and final season of the Netflix series Stranger Things was filmed at Háifoss, one of Iceland’s tallest and most dramatic waterfalls. In the show, this striking location stands in for a beautiful, faraway land, a place of peace and reflection for the main character, Eleven. The vastness and stillness of the setting reinforce the scene’s quiet sense of distance and calm.

Surrounded by cliffs and raw, untouched nature in Þjórsárdalur, one of South Iceland’s most striking and remote valleys, Háifoss offers visitors a glimpse into landscapes that feel worlds away.

Ennis, Alaska, is not a real place

Iceland’s landscape is not the only attraction. Film in Iceland supports international productions with a 35% refund on costs—a sign of the country’s strong and growing film industry. A small town in Iceland might just as easily double for a remote, icy outpost elsewhere. True Detective, Season 4, is set in Alaska, high above the Arctic Circle, in a town named Ennis. In reality, Ennis does not exist.

Dalvík, the northern seaside community known for whale watching, was turned into the fictional Alaskan settlement where Jody Foster and Kali Reis play Detectives Liz and Evangeline. In southern Iceland, scenes were filmed at RVK Studios, the 'film village' on Reykjavík's outskirts.

The eight-episode crime drama is the largest film project ever taking place in Iceland. Iceland's Minister of Culture called it "The biggest foreign investment in the field of culture in Iceland's history."

Famous Filming Locations

Thanks to easy access from Reykjavík and a wide range of dramatic landscapes, many of Iceland’s best-known filming locations are found in the south of the country. Vatnajökull National Park stands out as one of the most frequently used regions, offering glaciers, volcanic terrain, and vast open spaces within reach of the capital.

Svínafellsjökull, just off Route 1, gained international attention in the early 2000s when it appeared in the opening sequence of the James Bond film Die Another Day. While the glacier has since receded and filming activity has shifted elsewhere, it remains one of Iceland’s most recognizable cinematic landscapes. Its most recent major appearance was during the early seasons of Game of Thrones.

Iceland features prominently throughout Game of Thrones, with an estimated 10% of the series filmed there. Locations such as Dimmuborgir and Skógafoss doubled as parts of the show’s fictional world. When Kirkjufell appeared on screen, visitor interest surged, transforming the once-quiet mountain into one of the most photographed sites in Iceland.

This village is on Netflix

In recent years, Icelandic television series have brought smaller towns and remote regions into the global spotlight, particularly through international streaming platforms. The crime drama Trapped, set in Siglufjörður, introduced audiences worldwide to the town's dramatic landscapes and helped raise global awareness of it.

The Netflix series Katla followed, set in the village of Vík. The show highlighted the stark beauty of the south coast and the ever-present influence of Katla volcano, reinforcing Iceland’s reputation as a place where nature and storytelling are closely intertwined.

But few have benefited more than Húsavík. The town of 2,000 people on the northern coast was at the center of “Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga” and had an Oscar-nominated theme song named after the town. Locals seized the opportunity and established the first-ever museum dedicated to the Eurovision Song Contest, a year after the film premiered on Netflix. It’s next door to the JaJa DingDong bar and café!

Alien planets and apocalyptic Earth

The landscape of Iceland is often used to depict foreign planets, and Ridley Scott’s prequel to the Alien franchise, “Prometheus”, was partly filmed in northern Iceland. The dramatic opening sequence was shot at Dettifoss, Europe’s largest waterfall by volume, as an otherworldly scene in which an alien stands above the waterfall before falling into the waters below. Dettifoss is part of the Diamond Circle drive.

A more recent post-apocalyptic tale is the Netflix film “The Midnight Sky,” directed by George Clooney, who also stars as a lonely Arctic scientist. Clooney and his crew spent 15 days on top of the glacier Skálafellsjökull, an outlet of the mighty Vatnajökull in the southeast, for the atmospheric scenes. That’s a location to enjoy solely on screen.

Please enjoy the Film in Iceland trailer, which highlights films and television series that have come to Iceland, so far!