Why every figure here has a date

Because a number without a date is a guess wearing a suit. Every figure on this site carries the day it was read, the page it was read on, and a "checked" date on the ledger it sits in, for one reason: the figures move, and the only honest thing a planning site can tell you is how old its knowledge is. Three of them moved between the first drafts of our ledgers and today, and they are the argument in miniature.

#Three figures that moved

On 30 August 2026 the Ring Road around Hornafjörður was free. On 1 September it cost 1,500 ISK per crossing by camera, under a Vegagerðin notice published on 31 August. A seven-day Ring Road page written in August and never re-read would be wrong by 3,000 ISK a week and would not know it.

On 29 October 2026 Baldur, the Breiðafjörður car ferry, was sailing daily. On 30 October it went into dry dock in Hafnarfjörður until "late November", with a passenger boat covering Flatey three days a week. The ledger that carries the ferry as its own row with its own minutes is the ledger that can say so in one line; a page that folds the crossing into "drive to the Westfjords" cannot.

On 1 November 2026 at 15:10, 95-octane petrol in the capital area cost 255.20 ISK a litre at eight stations and 289.40 at ten others, on the same list, read at the same minute. Any single "fuel price" is a choice; ours is the most common figure on the list, 284.20, and the page says so and says when.

#What a ledger is

A ledger is the day-by-day table on every journey page: kilometres, minutes at the wheel, ferry minutes, where you sleep, and a note. The kilometres come from the road authority where it publishes them and from routing over OpenStreetMap where it does not, and the page says which. The minutes are legal speed in normal conditions, 80 km/h on paved road and 50 on gravel, rounded to five. Nothing in a ledger is an impression. If a figure could not be sourced it is left out and the note says so, which is why some notes read like apologies.

The ledger recomputes two things when you move the start date: daylight, from the NOAA solar equations for the capital's coordinates, and fuel, from the dated per-litre price on the country page multiplied by the ledger's litres. Those are the only two computed figures on the page, and both are labelled as computed, because a computed number has a formula you can check and a looked-up number has a page you can check, and a reader is owed one or the other.

#Bands, not budgets

Beds and meals are bands: budget, mid, upper. Not because we are coy, but because there is no public dated price for a guesthouse in Vík in June 2027; there are a hundred, and whichever one we typed would be a fantasy by the time you read it. A band says what kind of place and what kind of meal; your own booking says the number. Ferry fares get the same treatment, with one exception: where an operator publishes a "from" price on its own page we may quote it, with the date, and never otherwise. Tolls and parking fees, which are set by a single operator and posted, are quoted with their date.

#The date is the method

Every page has three dates. Published is when it first went up. Updated is the last edit. Checked is the one that matters: the last day every figure in the ledger was read again against its source. We re-check twice a year and whenever a reader tells us something moved. When a figure is wrong it is corrected in place and the correction is noted at the foot of the page.

That is the whole of it. We do not promise the number is right. We promise it was right on the day named beside it, that the page it came from is listed, and that the next person to check it can do so without trusting us. A route guide that cannot tell you when it last looked is asking you to drive on its memory. The dates are so that you do not have to.

#Sources

• The editorial policy page on this site: /editorial-policy
• Vegagerðin, Hornafjörður tolls from September, 31 August 2026: https://www.vegagerdin.is/en/about-us/operation/news/gjaldtaka-a-hringvegi-1-um-hornafjord-hefst-i-september
• Ferjuleiðir, Baldur sailing schedule, read 1 November 2026: https://www.ferja.is/en/our-ferries/baldur/sailing-schedule
• bensinverd.is, read 1 November 2026 at 15:10: https://bensinverd.is/
• NOAA, solar calculator equations: https://gml.noaa.gov/grad/solcalc/calcdetails.html