Atlas Obscura’s Iceland Week is in partnership with Icelandair, who will fly you to this unreal wonderland for surprisingly cheap…

Iceland is a country of otherworldly beauty, and to see this alien landscape in person can stir the imagination like almost no other place. However, if you haven’t yet had the chance to visit, there is one medium up to the challenge of breathing life into Iceland from your computer screen.

To create a time-lapse video, a still camera is set up on a tripod, and is programmed to take photos in evenly spaced intervals, say one photo every 10 seconds. The final product is a vision of many hours compressed into just a moment, resulting in a familiar world seen in an impossible way — clouds fly by, tides ebb and flow in a matter of seconds, the sun sets in a flash before your eyes. 

Iceland makes a perfect subject for this medium — its incredible scale, varied landscapes, and fantastical geological features have inspired many a time-lapse. From the mysterious light show of the Northern Lights threading across the sky, to ethereal gliding blue icebergs, to the eruption of a volcano, to the pink glow of the Midnight Sun, we’ve gathered some of the very best here, so hit play and journey to magical Iceland through a lens that, without the help of a camera, no mere mortal could see.

 

 

 

Atlas Obscura’s Iceland Week is in partnership with Icelandair, who will fly you to this unreal wonderland for surprisingly cheap…