Fire and ice, and the islands in between

Iceland sits on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the boundary where two tectonic plates are pulling apart beneath the ocean, and it is this fact, more than any other, that gives the country its volcanic landscape: geysers, lava fields, hot springs and a genuine history of eruptions that have, on occasion, grounded air traffic across an entire continent. A cruise built around the phrase "fire and ice" isn't reaching for a slogan; it is describing, fairly literally, what the geology is doing.

The 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, a volcano under a comparatively modest ice cap in the south, is the best-known recent example: the ash cloud it produced closed much of European airspace for days, a striking demonstration of how directly a relatively small Icelandic eruption can reach into daily life a thousand miles away. Iceland has lived with that possibility, in one form or another, for as long as people have lived there at all.

A stop most people know less about

Between Britain and Iceland lie the Faroe Islands, eighteen islands of volcanic rock governed as an autonomous territory of Denmark, with a population of around fifty thousand spread across a landscape of steep green cliffs, narrow sounds and villages tucked into whatever sheltered ground the fjords allow. Fewer British travellers have a clear picture of the Faroes than of Iceland, which makes a call there something closer to a genuine discovery than most stops on a well-trodden cruise itinerary manage to be.

Tórshavn, the Faroese capital and usually the port a ship calls at, is among the smallest capital cities anywhere, with a compact old town of turf-roofed wooden buildings around the harbour that has served as the islands' seat of government since the Viking age, making it one of the oldest continuously functioning parliamentary sites in the world, in the same tradition as Iceland's own Þingvellir a little further west.

Reykjavík, and the fjords beyond it

Reykjavík remains the natural heart of an Iceland call: the world's northernmost capital of any size, heated almost entirely by the geothermal energy running beneath it, with a harbourfront and a compact, walkable centre that suits a single day ashore well. Ships continuing round the coast typically call further north too, at towns like Akureyri or Ísafjörður in the west fjords, adding fjord scenery and a working, less touristed Iceland to the volcanic sights further south.

A single day in Reykjavík is enough to cover the harbour, the compact centre and, for those who want to venture a little further, an excursion out to the Golden Circle's geysers and waterfalls, all within reach of a ship still in port. It is a rare capital where a single call genuinely allows both the city and its best-known inland sights in the same day, rather than forcing a choice between them.

What "ice" actually means here

The ice half of the itinerary's name is no less literal than the fire half. Vatnajökull, Europe's largest ice cap by volume, covers a significant share of south-east Iceland and feeds glacial rivers, lagoons and, at Jökulsárlón, a slow procession of icebergs drifting out to sea past a beach scattered with smaller fragments, the reason it's known locally as Diamond Beach. Cruises don't typically reach this far into the interior, but the coastal towns and fjords they do call at sit within sight of glaciated mountains for much of the route, a fairly constant visual reminder of what lies inland.

Iceland's name itself has puzzled visitors for centuries, given how comparatively green much of the coastal lowland actually is; one popular, if unverifiable, explanation credits an early Norse settler who deliberately gave the island an off-putting name to discourage rival settlers, while nearby Greenland, by contrast, got the flattering one. Whatever the truth, the ice the name refers to is genuinely there, just mostly out of sight of the coast a ship actually sails.

Two very different landscapes, one crossing

What makes this route worth choosing over a more direct flight to Iceland is precisely the contrast the Faroes add: steep, densely green, sheep-farmed islands with a slower, more insular character, followed by Iceland's starker volcanic drama a day or so further on. Neither place resembles the other much, and seeing them within the same week, connected only by open water, does more to place each in context than visiting either alone.

Both were settled, at roughly similar dates in the ninth century, by Norse voyagers working their way further into the North Atlantic than most of Europe had yet gone, and both retain a distinct language and culture shaped by centuries of relative isolation since. A week that takes in both, rather than either alone, ends up tracing a fair share of that same Norse expansion west, port by port, on a route considerably more comfortable than the original one.