Breiðárlón, the lagoon almost nobody visits

Breiðárlón lies between Fjallsárlón and Jökulsárlón, off a gravel track that puts most rental cars off. That is the whole appeal: the same ice, the same glacier front, and a shoreline where the odds are good that the only footprints are yours. The lagoon is shallow and sheltered enough that it goes still more often than its neighbours, and still water here means the glacier and every berg arrive twice in the frame.

Calm mornings are the target. With no wind, the reflection is close to perfect and the composition becomes a symmetry exercise — put the couple low against the waterline and let the mirror do the rest. When the wind is up, the reflection is gone and the lagoon becomes an ordinary grey view, so this is a spot to keep as a plan A that can fall back to Fjallsárlón or Jökulsárlón ten minutes away. Late evening in summer gives long warm light with nobody around at all.

Access is the caveat to say out loud. The track in is gravel, rutted and sometimes potholed; check conditions and whether your car and its rental agreement allow it, and treat it as a summer-and-early-autumn route. It is not a marked F-road, but it behaves like a rough one after rain, and in winter it is often not worth attempting at all.

At the shore, the standard glacier-lagoon rules hold: no stepping on floating or beached ice, no walking on the glacier without a guide, and keep off the soft undercut bank at the water's edge. There are no facilities and no phone signal to rely on, so tell someone your plan and go with enough daylight in hand.