During Iceland’s bright and beautiful summerdays, there are numerous exciting day trips to and around Jokulsarlon, a huge glacial lake situated at the foot of Europe‘s largest glacier, Vatnajokull. The experienced Icelandic tour company, Vatnajokull Travel, offers unique guided tours in and around the Vatnajokull region of south east Iceland. The all year round trips and tours provide the perfect addition to any Iceland experience. Read the full story

Europe’s largest national park, which was opened at the beginning of June, is located in south Iceland and is over half the size of Macedonia.

Vatnajokull National Park is made up of the old Jokulsargljufur and Skaftafell national parks, as well as the entire Vatnajokull glacier.

Icelandic travel website www.South.is describes Vatnajokull National Park as the ‘meeting point of extremes’ – a sentiment instantly confirmed by the statistics.

Vatnajokull is the biggest glacier in Europe by volume and blankets six active volcanoes under its 8,000 square kilometres of ice. Fire and ice are extreme contrasts; but the National Park’s sheer size is extreme too: 13,000 square kilometres, or 13 percent of the entire country.

Creating a national park over the whole glacier was partly a political move intended to draw attention to the rapid melting of Iceland’s glaciers and to aid researchers in highlighting the reasons.

Although partly created for scientists, the second big winners will be the tourists coming to the south of Iceland. The park aims to have completed construction of its second visitors’ centre shortly, and an additional four visitors’ centres will be completed by 2012.

As well as this, rangers’ stations will increase from four to 11 under the 10 million euro investment plan currently underway. Iceland hopes to see a total increase of five to seven percent in visitor numbers to the country over the next few years in return for the investment.

People interested in the south of Iceland and Vatnajokull National Park can visit www.South.is – a leading English language website for the tourist industry in south Iceland. The site contains information on accommodation, current events, restaurants and attractions as well as an inspiring collection of photographs from the area.

Iceland recently announced plans to create a national park which will cover 15,000 square kilometres (3 million acres), or nearly 15 percent of the entire country. The Vatnajokull area already draws an estimated 40,000 tourists annually, according to the Telegraph.

The new park is located in the south-eastern part of the country and will be the largest in Europe when it opens. The park is remarkable not only for its size but also for the diversity of geographical features it contains. Vatnajokull is Europe’s largest glacier, and the area around it (including the existing Skaftafell national park, which will become part of the new national park) is known for its lava beds and sand flats, for its rivers and ravines, its volcanoes and its large stretches of wilderness.

The Detifoss waterfall draws huge number of tourists every year but is only one of the many attractions in the park which includes seven active volcanoes and the largest glacier in Europe.

In order to improve access to the park, construction is now underway for new visitor centres, marked trails and ranger stations.

Director-general of the Icelandic Tourist Board, Olof Yrr Atladottir, said: “National park status will protect the area against development, pollution and other human interference in order to preserve it for future generations.”

Iceland’s currency has experienced considerable weakening in recent months, which is expected to lead to an increase in tourist numbers this year.