5 expats who relocated to Iceland break down the biggest challenges they faced after moving

• Iceland is a hub for international migrants because of its nature, safety, and public services.
• But migrants to the Nordic country face some specific challenges, like expensive groceries and a lack of daylight in the winter.

Relocating is never easy, but the challenges vary greatly depending on where you move.

Iceland has a huge expat population. According to Statistics Iceland, more than 20% of its population was born overseas.

Five expats to Iceland told Business Insider about the biggest challenges they faced.

You've got to adjust to the lack of daylight

Iceland has near-constant daylight at the height of summer, and very little daylight at the peak of winter.

"I still find it very hard in the summer," said Shruthi Basappa, a food writer and cofounder of architecture studio SEI who is from India but relocated from Barcelona to Iceland 11 years ago. "It's always a challenge to sleep. And in the winters it's always a challenge to keep yourself awake."

In the winter, 9-to-5 workers miss the few hours of daylight while they're cooped up in the office.

"I used to be afraid of winter coming," Jewells Chambers, who relocated from Brooklyn seven years ago and makes the podcast All Things Iceland, said.

Chambers said she exercises and undertakes a project to distract her from the darkness. Sonia Nicolson, who moved from the UK eight years ago, recommends you "give into Hallmark movies and just be cozy and hibernate."

The long summer days, meanwhile, mean people struggle to know when to stop working.

"It's harder for me to know when I should relax, and I can exhaust myself," Chambers said. "I could burn out from excitement."

"It's hard to remember to eat dinner and it feels like the middle of the day even at 9 p.m.," said Jeannie Riley, a travel advisor at Iceland With a View who relocated from Texas in 2016. The expats recommended sleeping with eye masks and blackout blinds.

Grocery shopping can be a challenge

Icelandic grocery stores are expensive and lacking in variety, expats say.

"We are a tiny little island and it's very difficult to get fresh produce that's ripe and ready," Nicolson said.

Riley said she couldn't replicate some recipes she used to make in the US because she couldn't find the ingredients. "You can't get good avocados in Iceland," she said. "It's like winning the lottery." Fruit is "really expensive" and goes moldy faster, she said.

"When you've booked a flight, you always think about what you're going to buy in the supermarket," Nicolson said. Chambers said vacationers bring an extra suitcase to fill with food.

But the variety of food available has grown rapidly in the last decade, Basappa said.

Textiles designer Alice Olivia Clarke said that when she first moved to Iceland from Canada 30 years ago, she couldn't get takeout pizza.

"Now you can literally get anything," she said. "And if you can't get it in the country, you just order it in."

And Iceland's great for vegans, Chambers added.

Public transport is 'terrible'

"Driving is the standard in Iceland," Chambers said. Data from Iceland's transport department shows there were nearly 250,000 passenger cars in use in 2023, with Toyota the most popular brand.

Basappa said that when she first moved from Barcelona to Reykjavik, "I was so blind to the reality of how terrible public transport is." She'd presumed she could walk everywhere, but "we quickly learned after our first winter that you had to have a car."

Iceland has no trains and expats said buses were slow, expensive, and not frequent enough. Chambers doesn't recommend tourists travel around the country by public bus and warned that taxis are "extraordinarily expensive."

The people are as cold as the weather

Riley said making friends had been the "most challenging part" of her relocation.

"You never really feel like you're integrated into society," she said. "Icelanders are a little bit more closed off. They're not going to strike up a conversation and make small talk."

Nicolson said many Icelanders were still close to their school friends "and it's almost like their friendship group is full."

The expats said that instead, they'd made many friends through expat groups, including some on Facebook, which Chambers said is "the overlord of Iceland."

Prepare to battle with tourists

Tourism in Iceland exploded after widespread media coverage of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption in 2011. Pre-pandemic, Iceland had around 2 million international tourists a year, and the numbers are bouncing back.

"I think tourism has been wonderful for Iceland," Basappa said. "Our quality of life improved dramatically with the influx of tourism." The streets are livelier, more languages are spoken, and restaurants offer varied food, she said. It's also provided a huge boost to the country's economy.

But there's pushback. "There is a growing resentment that this is coming at the cost of the Icelandic heritage, like the language," Basappa said, referring to restaurant menus printed in English and servers speaking English.

Some tourists don't respect nature, Clarke said. And the main street in Reykjavik used to be Icelandic boutiques, but "everything got swept up and turned into puffin shops," she said. "That was a really difficult to see."

The expats also said that Airbnb was making rented accommodation harder to find and more expensive.

The nature still wins people over

The expats said Iceland had still wooed them, though. In particular, they referred to the beautiful scenery, safety, and public services like healthcare and education.

"Everything just seems very simple in Iceland," Riley said. "You're not running into hotel chains and overpasses, big, tall buildings."

Chambers said that she feels less stressed and away from the rat race in Reykjavik compared to in Brooklyn. Nicolson, meanwhile, said that children typically walk to school, even in the city center, and play out in the street.

"We're lucky to still have that," she said.

Did you relocate to Iceland? Contact this reporter at gdean@insider.com.