Filming locations in Vatnajökull

Visiting Vatnajökull: a set-jetting guide. The glacier country of south-east Iceland gave Christopher Nolan's Interstellar one of its most haunting settings. The blue glacier tongue of Svínafellsjökull, near Skaftafell, is the icy, frozen-cloud planet the crew explores on the far side of the wormhole. It is a stark, otherworldly stretch of the ring road, and standing before that wall of cracked blue ice makes the film's far-flung world feel suddenly, startlingly real.

The key location is Svínafellsjökull itself, a glacier outlet spilling off the vast Vatnajökull icecap within the national park of the same name. You can take it in from the car park and the marked path that leads toward the ice, which is the safe and rewarding way to see it. Going out onto the glacier itself is another matter entirely, attempt that only with a guided group, as the crevasses hidden in the ice are genuinely dangerous.

The great convenience is that this sits just off the ring road, so it slots naturally into a self-drive along Iceland's south coast rather than demanding a detour. The headline stops cluster within easy reach: the Jökulsárlón ice lagoon, where icebergs drift toward the sea, is a short drive east, and Skaftafell itself offers waterfalls and longer hikes for anyone who wants to linger in the landscape.

Base yourself around Skaftafell to be on the doorstep of the glacier and its neighbours, and give the ring road the time it deserves. Iceland's weather is famously changeable, so build in flexibility and check conditions before any walk near the ice. The reward is a landscape that needs no set dressing at all, the same raw, frozen grandeur that let a glacier in the south-east stand in for a planet on the far side of the galaxy.