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

4.5.2007

Baugur Group's Chief Executive Guilty of False Accounting

Icelandic Billionaire Buys a luxury Pad in New Yor The founder of Baugur, the Icelandic investment group that has been a voracious acquirer of UK retailers, was found guilty on Thursday of false accounting in a Reykjavik court after a five-year legal battle.

Jón Ásgeir Jóhannesson, chief executive of the group, whose investments range from the Hamleys toy store to House of Fraser department stores, was given a three-month suspended prison sentence after being found guilty of a charge of false accounting relating to a credit invoice for $589,890.

The prosecution successfully argued that the invoice was used to falsely inflate Baugur’s accounts in 2001 when it was still a public company. Mr Jóhannesson’s defence team is understood to be planning an appeal.

“Baugur remains supportive behind Jón Ásgeir and continues to stand behind his innocence,” said a spokesman for the company. “As far as Baugur is concerned, it is business as usual.”

A police raid in August 2002 led to a raft of charges that helped derail two large Baugur takeover bids – that of Somerfield, the supermarket chain, and Arcadia, the fashion group. But as the court process dragged on, Baugur sought to put the case to one side and continued aggressively to acquire a variety of retailers, mostly in Britain.

The initial complaint came from Nordica, a small US wholesaling group, whose representative Jon Gerald Sullenberger brought the charges against Baugur, Mr Jóhannesson and five co-defendants, including his father, his sister and Tryggvi Jonsson, the former Baugur vice-president.

Of an original 40 charges, Mr Jóhannesson has been acquitted or found not guilty on all but one. He has claimed the investigation was politically motivated at the instigation of the Icelandic government, a charge that has been denied, and he said in 2005 that there was “no chance in hell” that he would go to jail.

Jón Ásgeir is planning to continue in business. Last month he told the Financial Times that Woolworths, the troubled variety retailer in which Baugur holds a 10 per cent stake, should stop spending money on ailing stores and that its management, led by chief executive Trevor Bish-Jones, should “get their act together”.

“It’s a tricky situation there,” said Mr Jóhannesson. “It could be very hard for the management. If they don’t make big changes they could be in trouble.”

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