About Us
needs to make a meaningful reconnection to Nature.”
Thor Travel is a local Icelandic tour operator built around a fairly simple idea: travelling in Iceland should be about experiencing the country, not racing around ticking places off a list. Iceland has been here for quite a while. There is no need to see all of it before lunch.
We believe in personal service, local knowledge and taking the time to actually experience the places we visit. Iceland is spectacular, but it can also be unpredictable. The weather changes, roads close, plans change and sometimes Iceland simply decides that your carefully prepared Plan A is not going to happen. That is where local knowledge, experience and a good Plan B — and occasionally Plan C — become rather useful.
Thor Travel is owned and operated by Bjarni Gaukur Þórmundsson (BG), an experienced Icelandic tourism professional and certified guide. BG has worked in Icelandic tourism for decades, including as Country Manager for Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT) / Grand Circle Corporation (GCC), and as Operating Supervisor at Reykjavík Excursions / Kynnisferðir, one of Iceland’s largest tour operators. Over the years he has guided travellers from around the world and travelled extensively throughout Iceland. There are not many corners of the country he hasn’t found his way into at some point.
His background is not all tourism. BG has also served as Vice President of the Icelandic Basketball Association and spent around 20 years coaching basketball. Guiding tourists and coaching basketball may sound like completely different jobs, but surprisingly they require many of the same skills: preparation, communication, patience, quick decisions when the original plan stops working — and occasionally explaining the same thing more than once.
Today, Northern Lights tours are the main focus of Thor Travel. BG has personally led more than 400 Northern Lights tours, which has taught him one thing above all: the Northern Lights do not care about your schedule. Every evening is different, which is why we operate only one Northern Lights departure each night — one guide, one group and one mission: find the Northern Lights.
We don’t follow a fixed route — we follow the sky. We study the weather, cloud cover, road conditions and aurora forecasts and use experience and local knowledge to decide where we believe the best conditions will be that night. Sometimes that means going in a completely different direction from the night before. That is part of the hunt.
Although the Northern Lights are our main focus today, the philosophy behind Thor Travel has not changed. We want our guests to experience the real Iceland — its nature, history, stories, people and occasionally rather strange weather — rather than simply looking at it through a bus window.
We also believe in offering genuine value for money. Good planning, experienced guiding, personal service and flexibility are at the heart of what we do. Our goal is simple: when you leave Iceland, we want you to take home more than photographs. We want you to take home great stories, real memories and hopefully a little bit of Iceland with you.
The team
Bjarni Gaukur
Founder and owner / Manager / Driver / Guide / Driver guide
About
Bjarni Gaukur — or BG, as pretty much everyone calls him — is certainly no stranger to Icelandic tourism. He has spent decades in the industry, including as Country Manager for Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT) / Grand Circle Corporation (GCC) and as Operating Supervisor for Reykjavík Excursions / Kynnisferðir, one of Iceland’s largest tour operators. He is also a certified guide and licensed professional driver, so he has experienced Icelandic tourism from just about every angle — from the office to behind the wheel and out in the Icelandic weather.
Today, BG’s speciality is the Northern Lights. Having personally led more than 400 Northern Lights tours, he has spent a considerable amount of his life staring at weather forecasts, cloud maps and the Icelandic sky. He knows that hunting the Northern Lights requires experience, patience, flexibility and occasionally a willingness to drive in exactly the opposite direction from everyone else. The Northern Lights don’t take reservations and they certainly don’t care about our schedule.
Years of working with travellers from around the world have taught BG what visitors really appreciate about Iceland. Of course they come for waterfalls, glaciers, volcanoes and the Northern Lights — but the best memories often come from the stories, the unexpected stops, the conversations and discovering something that wasn’t necessarily on the itinerary. That is very much the philosophy behind Thor Travel.
Before Thor Travel, BG’s life wasn’t all tourism. Basketball has been a huge part of it too. After becoming passionate about the game as an exchange student in the United States, he went on to spend around 20 years coaching basketball and served as Vice President of the Icelandic Basketball Association. He still plays today — although possibly not quite as quickly as he remembers.
And when it comes to sport, there are two loyalties that have survived the years: the Los Angeles Lakers and Liverpool FC. Lakers fans are welcomed as brothers and sisters in arms, and Liverpool supporters will understand another part of the Thor Travel philosophy: You’ll Never Walk Alone. Once you are travelling with BG, you are part of the group and he will do his best to make sure everyone is looked after — whether you’re standing under the Northern Lights, dealing with Icelandic weather or simply wondering where the hell we are going next.
When BG isn’t guiding, chasing the Northern Lights, watching Liverpool or arguing about basketball, he enjoys heading into the Icelandic countryside with his family, camping and finding new and remote corners of the country. After decades of travelling around Iceland, somehow there is always somewhere else to explore.
Júlía
Guide
About
Versatility and wanderlust is probably the best way to describe Júlía. She was born and partially raised in Iceland but also partially raised in Berlin; in fact, her evil alter ego is quite German.
When she’s not driving a zodiac between icebergs along the coasts of Greenland or hiking across the Icelandic highlands, she spends her free time dancing her way through Latin America. She holds a degree in English and historical linguistics from the Humboldt University in Berlin, a degree in psychology from Würzburg University and she additionally studied tour guiding at the University of Iceland.
But she promises to neither correct your grammar nor psychoanalyze you but simply take you on an adventure through Iceland’s beautiful and unique nature.
Jónas Guðmundsson
Guide
About
Jónas is very experienced people in the business with an impressive track record spanning over 30 years. His work for the National Association of Search and Rescue in Iceland ( Landsbjörg) is well known in Iceland since he was mainly in charge of tourist safety issues but also coordination on a national level when disaster struck. Weather conditions, volcanic eruptions and rescue of lost and / or injured people is something that is not unusual in Iceland and then Jónas would coordinate actions on a national level when needed.
Jónas is also a best selling author of books on interesting hiking trails to explore in the highlands as well as rhe lowland and has published a number of articles on nature, the outdoors and traveling in Iceland in general. So in short, his record is unparalleled and he highly enjoys sharing his experience and knowledge with our guests.