I was wearing a neon yellow survival suit, pelted sideways by rain, crammed into a Zodiac with strangers, and laughing at the sheer absurdity of all of it.
Then I saw the icebergs up close. And I stopped laughing.
What happened next was not something I planned for:Tears. Actual tears, running down a face that was already soaking wet — which, in retrospect, was excellent camouflage.
This is the thing about Jökulsárlón that no photograph adequately prepares you for: the scale. The silence underneath the sound of water. That shocking ice blue. That particular, impossible blue that exists only inside ancient glacial ice — compressed over centuries until all the air is forced out and what remains absorbs every wavelength of light except the one that looks like the inside of a dream.
I am a neuropsychologist. I study how the brain processes experience. I know exactly what was happening to me on that boat; and it didn’t matter at all
What Awe Actually Does to You
Psychologists Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt describe awe as the emotion we feel when we encounter something so vast — physically, conceptually, or spiritually — that our existing mental frameworks cannot contain it. The brain, faced with something it cannot categorize, does something remarkable: it quiets the default mode network, the part responsible for self-referential thought. The internal monologue stops. The to-do list evaporates. The version of yourself that worries about what you look like in a survival suit simply… ceases to operate.
This is what researchers call the “small self” effect. You don’t disappear; you just stop being the most important thing in the room. Or the lagoon.
The result, physiologically, is a measurable reduction in inflammatory cytokines (the biological markers of chronic stress), a shift in autonomic nervous system tone, and , for many people, spontaneous tears. Not sadness, not joy exactly but something older than both.
I cried because my nervous system encountered something it couldn’t perform for. There was nothing to do but just exist. Maybe that’s why I personally always seek out raw, vast landscapes such as impossible sand dunes, start deserts, vast open ocean – the pure scale reduces everything down to THAT MOMENT.
That is, in my clinical and personal opinion, the point of travel.
The Prescription: Rawness Needs Recovery
Here is what I know after years of designing travel experiences around how the nervous system actually works: awe is metabolically expensive. The emotional processing required after a genuine encounter with something vast — something that reorganizes your internal landscape — requires rest, warmth, good food and the permission to simply absorb. This is not weakness or indulgence; this is biology.
Which is why after the zodiac adventure to the lagoon, I drove back the short distance to Fosshotel Glacier Lagoon and did not feel guilty about any of it.
The hotel is a study in restraint — dark timber, clean lines, a lobby installation of amber and copper glass globes that catch light like the icebergs caught it, in ways that feel improbable and right. My room had a window that framed the Icelandic plain like a landscape painting. I sat in front of it in a robe with a glass of wine and did not move for forty-five minutes.
Dinner was langoustine risotto and it was the most extraordinary meal after the day of wind and water in my face, salt in my hair, and my very first iceberg. Risotto will forever be special.
If you are going to Jökulsárlón — and you should go to Jökulsárlón — build in a night at Fosshotel. Not because you need luxury to earn the experience. But because the experience deserves somewhere quiet to land.
Who This Trip Is For
Not everyone. Which is the honest answer I give all my clients.
Jökulsárlón is remote. The South Coast of Iceland is a long drive from Reykjavík. The weather will not cooperate with your plans. The icebergs do not perform on schedule. Diamond Beach is windy and cold and has no amenities.
If you need your travel to be comfortable in the conventional sense; predictable, curated, controlled ; this is not your destination. I have clients fo rwhom this is EXACTLY what is needed – and others who travel completely differently.
If you are the kind of traveler who suspects that the best things happen when you are faced with raw nature — if you have ever stood somewhere and felt, for a moment, that the noise inside your head simply stopped — then Iceland will give you exactly what you need.
Even if you packed five dresses and wore none of them.
Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon is located in Southeast Iceland, approximately 5 hours from Reykjavík along the Ring Road. Zodiac tours of the lagoon are operated by Glacier Lagoon Boat Tours. Fosshotel Glacier Lagoon is available through Evocative Travel — inquire about availability and Virtuoso amenities.
— Daniela Ferdico, PsyD | Evocative Travel
