Copenhagen or Oslo stopover, 2 days

Is it sane? Yes, in any month, and it is the cheapest change you can make to an Iceland trip: two days in a Scandinavian capital on the way, without a car, on a route that Icelandair flies daily from both cities. It is the wrong plan if your Iceland days are already too few; the stopover takes two of them and gives back a different kind of trip, not more of the same. And it is a different plan than it was two years ago, because PLAY, the low-cost airline that sold Copenhagen–Keflavík and Oslo–Keflavík as cheap connections, stopped flying on 29 September 2025. Icelandair, SAS and Norwegian remain.

The ledger above is Copenhagen's. Oslo's two days are set out below in the same shape; the two are the same decision with different answers.

#Copenhagen, day 1: the airport is in the city

Kastrup is 10 km from the centre and the metro runs from under the terminal. There is no sense in a car. The first afternoon is the harbour: Nyhavn, the opera on its island, the new quarters at Nordhavn where the city has built on the water, and a harbour bath if the month allows. Copenhagen is flat and the hire bikes are the transport. Dinner is the city's argument for itself; the mid band here buys more than it does in Reykjavík or Oslo.

#Copenhagen, day 2: morning, then Keflavík

Morning options, one of them: the Design Museum, the Glyptotek, or the train across the Øresund bridge to Malmö and back, which puts a third country on the trip for the price of a regional ticket. The afternoon flight to Keflavík is with Icelandair or SAS; the flight time is not printed here because neither airline's timetable page was readable when this ledger was checked. On arrival, a night in Keflavík town suits a late landing; Reykjavík is 50 km and an hour by the airport bus.

#Oslo, in the same shape

Day 1: Gardermoen is 49 km north of the city and the airport train takes about twenty minutes. The fjord side is the afternoon: the opera roof, the Munch museum on the water, the ferry across to Bygdøy for the Viking Age Museum when it reopens (it was closed for rebuilding at the time of writing; check) and the Fram polar ship, which is the better fit for a trip that is about to go north. Day 2: the Holmenkollen ski jump by metro, or an hour's walk in the Nordmarka forest from the end of the same line, then the airport train and Icelandair or Norwegian to Keflavík. Oslo on 20 May has about seventeen hours of daylight (computed, NOAA), which makes a late walk sensible; Copenhagen has about sixteen.

The Oslo rows, in the ledger's shape:

Both versions carry zero road kilometres, which is the point: the two days cost nights and flight hours, not fuel, and they are the only rows on this site where the hire car is not yet in the picture.

#What each adds to Iceland

Copenhagen adds contrast. It is the most urban, flat, cycling, well-fed place in the North, and two days there before a week of lava and wind make both halves sharper. It is also the gateway for the Faroes and Greenland by air and the start of the Norröna ferry route from Hirtshals, so a Copenhagen stop can become the beginning of something longer; this site's ferry journey starts there.

Oslo adds a preamble. It is the North in miniature: a fjord at the door, forest on the tram line, museums about ships that went to the ice. If the Iceland trip is partly about the Arctic, Oslo is the first chapter. It is also the hub for Norway's own fjords and for Tromsø, which puts the Lapland aurora route within one flight.

#What it costs

Both cities are mid-band for a hotel and food; Oslo's restaurant prices are the highest on this site, Copenhagen's are high but the quality per krone is better. Fees that exist: airport transport, city transport passes, museum tickets, all priced by the operators and not quoted here. There is no fuel line and no hire car. The flight cost is the real variable: with PLAY gone, the Icelandair fare with a stopover built in is usually the single ticket to compare against SAS or Norwegian plus Icelandair bought separately.

#What goes wrong

Little. A late Keflavík arrival and a 50 km transfer is the one thing to plan: book the Keflavík night rather than Reykjavík. In winter, a Copenhagen or Oslo morning fog delays short-haul departures by an hour, which matters only if the Iceland hire car is booked for a fixed collection time.

#Variations

Three days: add the Louisiana museum up the coast from Copenhagen or a day on the Oslofjord islands. Both cities: Copenhagen to Oslo is a flight of under an hour or an overnight ferry (DFDS; cadence from its site), and a Copenhagen–Oslo–Keflavík shape is a week with two capitals. Combination: Copenhagen plus the Hirtshals ferry replaces the flight entirely; see the 12-day Faroes and Iceland journey.

#Sources

Icelandair's stopover page for the programme terms; ch-aviation for PLAY's closure; OSRM on OpenStreetMap for the airport distances; NOAA's solar equations for the daylight. Airline flight times: check. Ledger checked 1 November 2026.