Too Many Maps - Iceland Case Study

Do you have this problem? You are touring a new area (country, city, etc.) and you come home with a pile of paperwork. You can’t seem to get rid of it before going home. It might contain valuable information, right? Or so you tell yourself and so you end up with a pile of slips of paper, museum guides, business cards, and maps, especially maps. We were in Iceland for 5 days recently and it seemed like every time we asked someone a question, that person whipped out a map and made an “X” on it and handed it to us before I could say, “but we already have a map”. And so timidness and being slow-to-the-draw resulted in a pile of maps - all of various usefulness. We have a big plastic bin at home that contains maps of places we’ve been. We hardly open that bin when embarking on a trip to a location from which we’ve already collected maps. Sigh.

Each map we collected in Iceland has some particular bent behind it. There are dining maps, auto-rental maps, bus route maps, tour company promotional maps, regional promotional maps, and many more. We purchased the International Travel Maps map of Iceland before we left (www.itmb.com) but didn’t use it much.

For Reykjavík, we used the Big Map the most (www.bigmap.is). In the Golden Circle we used the excellent Uppsveitir Árnessýslu map (www.sveitir.is) and see below. 

Besides the physical maps, we had iPhone and Windows Phone mapping applications and a Garmin Nuvi 270. What we found is that a physical map was still the best used in conjunction with a phone mapping application for a sanity check to make sure you taking the right turns.

Big Map 2012-2013, Left: Inside, Right: Cover


Bus Route Map, Left: Side 1, Right: Side 2 Sponsored by the Saga Museum?


Various Other Iceland Maps

Iceland Excursions Map, Left: inside, Right: Cover

The Most Useful Map for the Golden Circle Area – Upper Árnessýslu Area. This map has all the sites you’ll typically see and a brief description of them.  
What’s On Map of Reykjavik, Left: Inside, Right: Cover