Best markets in Iceland

Kolaportid flea market

Kolaportid is Iceland's only proper weekend market, running Saturday and Sunday 11am-5pm in a warehouse on Tryggvagata by the harbour. Half is second-hand clothes and Icelandic wool sweaters (ISK 7369-ISK 14738 for a real lopapeysa), half is food. The building is a former customs warehouse, cavernous and only lightly heated, so keep a coat on even in July. Entry is free and it draws as many Reykjavik locals hunting bargains as visitors filling an hour before a flight. Parking on Tryggvagata itself is metered until 6pm, but the City Hall garage on Vonarstraeti, five minutes on foot, usually has space when the harbour-front spots are full.

The food side is where to try hakarl cubes, dried fish (hardfiskur) with butter, rugbraud rye bread and pickled ram's testicles if you dare. Free samples everywhere. Cash is useful here but cards work on most stalls. Sildarbudin's herring stall is the one worth queuing for, with pickled and cured herring served on rye for around ISK 1500 a portion. Vendors change slightly week to week since stalls are rented rather than fixed, so a favourite seller from a previous visit is not guaranteed to be there. Go straight after opening at 11am on Saturday for the freshest hardfiskur, since good batches often sell out by early afternoon. Skip the imported souvenir stalls near the entrance — they are pitched at cruise passengers and cost more than the same items on Laugavegur.

Hlemmur Food Hall

Hlemmur Matholl in the old bus station on Laugavegur is Reykjavik's stylish food hall — 10 stalls, open daily 8am-11pm. Skal! does Nordic small plates (ISK 983-ISK 1965), Ban Thai has good pad see ew (ISK 2211), and Fjarhusid does the best cinnamon buns in the city. The building was Reykjavik's central bus terminal until the 1980s, and the high, glass-roofed hall still has that transit-hub scale, with communal bench seating rather than table service. Loji does natural wine by the glass from ISK 1800, a good match with the raw bar inside the hall. Weekday lunches, roughly noon to 2pm, are the quietest window; weekend evenings after 8pm get loud with a mixed crowd of tourists and locals meeting for drinks rather than a full meal.

The atmosphere is buzzy in the evenings — a nice alternative to committing to one restaurant. It suits groups with different appetites — one person can order ramen while another gets a burger, and everyone shares a table. There is no reservation system, so on a Friday night after 9pm expect to circle for a free seat, especially near the bar in the centre of the hall. Hlemmur is a two-minute walk from the Hlemmur bus terminal on Laugavegur/Snorrabraut, making it an easy first or last stop for anyone using Straeto city buses. Compared with Grandi Matholl across town, Hlemmur has more variety but less waterfront charm; pick Hlemmur if you are already on Laugavegur and want options without walking further.

Grandi Matholl and beyond

Grandi Matholl on Grandagardur out on the harbour peninsula is a smaller food hall — 8 stalls including Kore for Korean, Habibi for Middle Eastern, and Fish Company for cheap fish and chips (ISK 1965). Handy if you are already at the whale-watching boats. The hall sits inside a converted fish-processing warehouse, and the industrial shell is largely untouched — corrugated walls, exposed pipework, big garage doors that stay open on calmer days. It is a ten-minute walk from the Old Harbour whale-watching piers used by Elding and Special Tours, so it works well as a lunch stop either side of a three-hour tour. Opening hours are shorter than Hlemmur's, typically 11am-9pm, and it closes earlier on Sundays, so check before planning a late dinner here.

In Akureyri, Bruggsmidjan brewery runs a small Saturday market in summer. Vik has a modest weekend produce stall outside Kronan supermarket. Bruggsmidjan's market runs June through August only, alongside its taproom, and is worth combining with a stop for the brewery's own beers rather than travelling for the market alone. In Vik, the Kronan stall is genuinely modest — a folding table of local rhubarb jam, skyr and the odd basket of vegetables — so treat it as a five-minute browse on the way to Reynisfjara rather than a destination. Neither comes close to Kolaportid or Hlemmur in scale, and outside Reykjavik, farm shops attached to individual farms are usually a better bet for fresh produce than any organised market.

Fru Lauga and Reykjavik's farm shops

Fru Lauga is a small farm shop in Laugardalur, on Laugalaekur near the Laugardalslaug pool, selling eggs, lamb, root vegetables and dairy direct from a handful of Icelandic farms. It is open Tuesday to Saturday, roughly 11am-6pm, and closed Sundays and Mondays, so plan around that if it is the reason for the trip out. Prices run higher than Kronan or Bonus supermarkets — a dozen eggs is close to ISK 1200 — but the quality and the chance to talk to someone who actually keeps the animals is the point. It is a fifteen-minute walk or a short bus ride (route 14) from downtown, easily combined with a swim at Laugardalslaug next door.

There is no single farmers' market building in Reykjavik the way there is in Copenhagen or Helsinki — Iceland's growing season and small population never supported one — so farm shops like Fru Lauga function as the closest equivalent, alongside occasional pop-up stalls outside Kronan branches in summer. Burid, a cheese and charcuterie shop on Grandagardur near Grandi Matholl, is worth combining with a food-hall visit for Icelandic skyr, butter and cured meats to take away. If a genuine farmers' market experience is the goal, treat Fru Lauga as the destination and skip searching for anything larger — it does not exist here.

Christmas markets

Reykjavik runs a seasonal Christmas market on Ingolfstorg square, roughly late November through 23 December, with wooden stalls selling mulled wine, grilled lamb sausages, mittens and small crafts, plus a Ferris wheel some years. It is free to browse, evenings after 5pm are the most atmospheric once the square's lights are on, and it sits two minutes from Austurstraeti's bars if the cold gets too much. Hafnarfjordur, a fifteen-minute drive or Straeto bus 1 from central Reykjavik, runs its own Yule Lads village (Jolathorpid) in the same window, with a more folkloric, family feel and food stalls selling smoked lamb and hangikjot sandwiches.

Both are worth an evening rather than a special day trip — Ingolfstorg because it is small enough to see in twenty minutes, Hafnarfjordur because it is aimed squarely at children meeting the thirteen Yule Lads rather than serious food shopping. Neither runs in summer, so anyone visiting between January and October will not find either open; the entire concept is a December fixture only. If choosing one, pick Ingolfstorg for convenience if staying downtown, and Hafnarfjordur if travelling with kids who want photos with the Yule Lads rather than food stalls.

Practical tips: cash, timing and what to skip

Cash use has almost vanished in Iceland generally, but Kolaportid is the one place where a mix of cash and card still makes sense, since some of the older second-hand stalls still prefer notes. ATMs are inside the building near the main entrance on Tryggvagata. At the food halls, ordering and paying happen at each individual stall rather than through a central till, so keep a card handy rather than running a tab. Budget roughly ISK 2000-3000 per person for a light meal at Hlemmur or Grandi, more if drinking wine or beer alongside.

Weather decides more than opening hours here: a genuinely wet, windy Saturday is exactly when Kolaportid is busiest and most enjoyable, while a rare sunny weekend is better spent outdoors and the market will feel comparatively quiet inside its warehouse walls. Avoid visiting any of these on a Monday — Kolaportid is shut entirely, and Fru Lauga is also closed, leaving only the two permanent food halls open. Book nothing in advance; none of these operate on a reservation system, and the appeal of all of them is the ability to just turn up.