Another interesting book for travellers in Iceland is “Adventure in Iceland” by Pall Asgeir Asgeirsson, published by Heimur. This is a cross between a road atlas and travel guide that just covers the four wheel drive only highland roads. Not only does it give good descriptions of the roads, but also has details of the technical difficulties on the particular roads.
Pay particular attention to the warnings about driving alone into these territories.
In a 4x4 you can easily get to some very remote and rarely traversed roads. Having a problem there can easily become very serious indeed, no mobile phone coverage to summon help and little chance of anyone passing to help can make things grim indeed.
It’s also worth noting that Icelandic hire cars are often very well used. In Europe and North America most hire cars are virtually brand new, Icelandic hire cars have to keep earning for many more years, so often have had a few knocks and have some potential problems.
As an example on our last trip we hired a Land Cruiser, it had done over 62,000 kms and the rear tailgate was difficult to close. Although I’d checked it had a jack & wheel brace to deal with a puncture I hadn’t checked the spare as it was behind a locked cover. On the last day we had a puncture on a rear tyre (which turned out to be nearly worn out anyway), only then did we discover the lock on the spare wheel cover was jammed and broken. It was only because we were in a town when this happened that we were able to contact the hirers and get someone else to help with extra tools to smash the lock off. The final indignity was being charged £150 for the puncture and a huge mobile phone bill arrived soon after too.