Welcome to Iceland Guest - Your Online Travel Guide.

Iceland Guest is an information website for your travel to Iceland. On this site you can get all the tourist information you need for your vacation in Iceland. We hope that you will find this online travel guide useful in planning your holidays in Iceland.

About Iceland
Iceland is a refreshingly unconventional travel destination. The Icelandic nature is unspoilt, exotic and mystical with its spouting geysers, active volcanoes, tumbling waterfalls, towering mountains, vast lava plains and magical lakes. Iceland’s fjords, glaciers and highland plains present visitors with some of the most beautiful and enchanting places they will ever see, as well as a rare feeling of utter tranquillity.

For travelers on a quest for action, Iceland’s pristine nature offers great potential for outdoor activities such as snowmobiling, horse riding, cave exploring, hiking, swimming, skiing, river rafting, kayaking and mountain safaris on modified four-wheel drives, to name but a few. Iceland supports a surprisingly diverse Nordic flora and fauna and is an ideal place for ornithology enthusiasts, while also offering some of the world’s best whale watching destinations.

About Reykjavik
Reykjavík sometimes feels like a cosmopolitan capital and a tiny seaside village - all wrapped up in one. But Reykjavík has the best of both worlds; the qualities of a modern, forward-looking society complemented by a close connection to Iceland‚s beautiful and unspoilt nature.

Reykjavík’s legendary nightlife is bolstered by plentiful cultural and social happenings in addition to an abundance of first-class restaurants. The size of Reykjavik city centre is also limited enough to allow for easy navigation by foot. Reykjavík has been described as a young and daring city that is characterized by strong contrasts. Conveniently small, clean and safe, it is more or less free from the major problems that haunt many other capitals. Big city events are frequent, the winter lights festival finished recently with thousands of participants and more tourist at this time of the year than we are used to.

in Focus

30.4.2007

Iceland's Glitnir Bank Q1 Net Profit Dips

Iceland's Glitnir Bank reported a 23-percent fall in first-quarter net profit to 7.0 billion Icelandic crowns ($109 million) on Monday, hit by a fall in trading income.

Iceland's second biggest bank by market capitalization said its net interest income rose to 7.9 billion crowns from 7.8 billion a year-ago while fee and commission income rose to 7.3 billion crowns from 5.6 billion.

But the volatile trading income fell sharply to 651 million crowns from 3.3 billion a year ago. Costs also rose.

"Net trading income was actually quite satisfactory in the quarter," investor relations head Vala Palsdottir said. "We had a one-time [high] record in the first quarter of 2006."

The bank have been expanding rapidly in recent years through overseas acquisitions. Glitnir has focused on broadening its footprint in the Nordic region, buying financial assets in Sweden, Finland and Norway.

"Increased cost in the first quarter both signifies more operations and focus on building the bank's infrastructure, but also investments into future growth," Glitnir Chief Executive Bjarni Armannsson said in a statement. "We are therefore optimistic as we go into the second quarter..."

Icelandic banks' aggressive expansion has led some analysts to voice concerns that they might run into difficulties in servicing their debt if the volcanic island's economy slowed sharply and the volatile currency lost value.

The banks have consistently voiced confidence in their funding situation and the Icelandic central bank said last week the financial system was better able to cope with shocks than a year ago, though it pointed to continued worries about the overall economy.

Glitnir said the island's economy looked "set to remain reasonably robust in the medium term," helping to create "a beneficial operating environment for the domestic sector."

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