CompanionIceland

Living in Iceland · Questions

Questions people actually ask

These are the questions foreigners type into a search bar late at night, before and after they move. Each one gets a short answer first, in two or three sentences, and then a link to the page where it is explained fully.

Last verified 4 August 2026 · island.is, utl.is, skatturinn.is, sjukra.is, skra.is

When an answer is our opinion and not a rule, we mark it as an editor's note. If an official Icelandic source says something different from this page, the official source is right.

Permits, visas and moving here

Almost every problem people meet in their first year starts with a permit question that was answered wrongly at the beginning.

How can a non-EU citizen move to Iceland?

If you are not from an EEA country, you need a residence permit before you travel. It is usually based on one job offer, a study place, or a close family member who already lives here. Útlendingastofnun (the immigration office) decides. Coming first and applying later is the mistake that costs people the most time.

The type of permit decides everything after it: how long you can stay, whether you can change employer, whether your family can come, and whether these years will later count towards permanent residence.

Read the full residency page

Is it hard to get a job in Iceland as a foreigner?

It depends mostly on your passport. An EEA citizen can come and look for work freely. A non-EEA citizen usually needs the job first, because the permit is tied to one named employer and one job.

Iceland is a small country and many jobs are filled through people who already know you. Registering with Vinnumálastofnun (the labour office), joining a union and using alfred.is covers the official side. But someone introducing you still works faster than a form.

Read how people actually find work here

How do I get a kennitala before moving?

You cannot get a resident kennitala (personal ID number) before you arrive. Þjóðskrá Íslands (Registers Iceland) gives it to you when you register your home address here. A limited kennitala can be given earlier for tax or bank reasons, but it does not mean you are registered as living in Iceland.

The kennitala is the number that opens everything else: the bank, Electronic ID, the tax card, the health centre, the rent contract. Getting it is the first real job of your first week.

See the registration steps in order

Can I move to Iceland without a job offer?

If you are an EEA, EU or Nordic citizen, yes. If you are not, then normally no. Most work permits need a named employer and an approved contract before the permit is given. The old long-term visa for remote work was repealed in 2026 and replaced by a short-term residence permit from Útlendingastofnun.

How long can I stay while looking for work?

An EEA or EFTA citizen can stay and look for work, and must register a home address with Þjóðskrá if the stay goes past three months. A visitor from outside the EEA can stay 90 days in any 180 days under the Schengen rule, and may not work in that time.

Days spent anywhere in the Schengen area count towards those 90 days, not only days in Iceland. Staying too long is one of the few mistakes that follows a person for years.

See the 90/180 rule explained

Do I need to speak Icelandic to work in Reykjavík?

For many jobs, no. Tourism, building work, cleaning, kitchens and parts of tech run in English every day. Icelandic matters when you want public sector work, care work, a promotion, or citizenship, which needs a language test.

Editor's note. The honest version: you can live here for years in English and never be stuck. You will also never be fully inside the room. Most people who stay a long time start learning in the end. Not because a form told them to, but because they got tired of being the person the conversation turns away from.

The language rule for citizenship

Housing and what life costs

The biggest shock for people moving here, and the subject where the internet gives the worst advice.

How much money do you need to live well in Iceland?

There is no honest single number, and we will not invent one. What is official is the lowest income Útlendingastofnun asks for on certain permits, and Iceland's published price and wage figures. Use those, not a number from a forum.

Three things decide your budget: your rent, whether you own a car, and whether you pay for childcare. Two people on the same salary can live very different lives here because of those three.

Official price and wage figures: Hagstofa Íslands (Statistics Iceland).

Read the money page

Where do people look for flats to rent in Reykjavík?

The open market runs mostly through leiguskjol.is, mbl.is and large Facebook rental groups. What most newcomers do not know is that this is not the only way. There are also non-profit and cooperative housing companies.

Bjarg, Búseti and city housing work with waiting lists and income limits instead of bidding. If you plan to stay for years, joining a list early costs you almost nothing and can change everything later.

Read about the housing associations

How expensive is rent compared with the US or UK?

Rent in the Reykjavík area is high for Europe. Comparing it by exchange rate alone is misleading, because wages, union agreements and housing benefit here are also different. Compare rent as a share of local pay, not in dollars or pounds.

Housing benefit (húsnæðisbætur) lowers the real cost for many renting households. You apply through island.is.

How renting actually works here

How do rental deposits work in Iceland?

A landlord can ask for security, most often money as a deposit or a bank guarantee. The Rent Act sets how much they can ask for and how it must be given back. Register the contract and take photos of the flat on the day you move in.

The fight you want to avoid is the one at the end, when the flat is empty and it is your word against theirs. Dated photos and a signed handover note settle almost all of them.

Deposits, contracts and getting your money back

Is it easy to buy property here if you do not live here?

EEA and EFTA citizens buy property in Iceland on more or less the same terms as Icelanders. Buyers from outside the EEA who do not live here usually need permission from the Ministry of Justice, and getting a home loan is much harder without Icelandic income and a credit record.

Buying, home loans and what banks look at

What does food cost each month in Iceland?

We do not print a monthly food number, because it moves with the exchange rate and with where you shop. What stays true is the pattern: imported food and fresh food out of season are the expensive part, and the low-price shops cost clearly less than the small corner shops.

Editor's note. Almost everyone who stays ends up shopping in the cheap chains, buying Icelandic dairy, fish and lamb, and treating imported fruit as a treat rather than a habit. Official price figures come from Hagstofa Íslands.

Tax, banking and money

Nothing here is hard to do once. But everything here hurts if it is left undone.

How high is income tax for a foreign worker?

Foreign workers registered as living here pay the same income tax and municipal tax as Icelanders, in bands set each year, with your personal tax credit taken off. Pension payments, and union fees if you join, come off separately.

The current rates and bands are published by Skatturinn and change every year. That is why we send you there instead of printing a number that goes out of date.

Read the tax page

How do I open a bank account as a foreigner?

Go into a branch in person with your kennitala, your passport and proof of your address. The bank checks who you are and, in the same visit, switches on your electronic ID (rafræn skilríki), the electronic ID that opens almost every public service here.

Do not leave the branch before your electronic ID works on your phone. Without it you cannot log in to island.is, see your tax card, read letters from the authorities, or sign documents.

The electronic ID step, explained

What is a tax card (skattkort) and how do I get one?

The tax card is your personal tax credit, which makes part of your pay untaxed. It is digital. Skatturinn issues it once you have a kennitala, and you give your employer permission to use it. There is no paper card to hand over.

If your employer is not using your tax card, you are paying tax without your credit and losing money every payday. Check it in your first month, not at the end of the year.

Tax cards, credits and unused credit

How does the yearly tax return work?

Everyone with a kennitala files a return in the spring through Skatturinn. Most of it is already filled in from your employer and your bank. Your job is to check it, correct it and send it before the deadline.

You still must file if you arrived in the middle of the year or earned very little. A missing return can quietly block benefits and make a later permit application harder.

The filing year, step by step

Can I take my pension out of Iceland if I leave?

Money you must pay into an Icelandic pension fund normally stays in the Icelandic system and is paid to you later as a pension, wherever you live. It is not paid back when you move away. The rules are different for extra, voluntary savings, so ask your own fund in writing.

Pensions, funds and extra savings

Health, unions and daily life

The systems that decide what happens to you in your worst week here.

How long do I wait for public healthcare?

You normally wait about six months from the day Registers Iceland registers your legal home address, unless a social security agreement, public insurance you had in another EEA country, or a family link covers you sooner. Those months are the gap where people lose money.

Private travel or health insurance for that first period is the cheapest protection you will ever buy here. Public insurance is run by Sjúkratryggingar Íslands.

Read the healthcare page

How do I register with a doctor (heilsugæsla)?

You register with the health centre for your area, normally through Heilsuvera using your electronic ID, and you can ask for a named doctor. The health centre is the first door for almost everything that is not an emergency.

Do this while you are well. People who register during an illness find out that the waiting time is not on their side.

What to do when you are sick

What do trade unions (stéttarfélög) actually give you?

Union membership makes the collective wage agreement your legal minimum pay. It also gives you a sickness fund, a holiday fund, money for courses, and free help if an employer pays you too little. The fee comes out of your salary by itself.

For a foreign worker this is the strongest protection in the country and the one people use least. The union will take up an unpaid wage case for you even if you have worked here only a few months, and it costs you nothing extra.

Unions, contracts and being underpaid

Is childcare expensive in Iceland for foreigners?

The municipality pays most of the cost, and it costs you the same as an Icelandic family once your child is registered at your address. The real problem is not money. It is the gap between the end of parental leave and the day a place is offered.

Put your child on the municipal waiting list as early as your municipality allows. Places, fees and discounts are decided by each municipality, not by the state.

Children, leave and registration

What if I get sick or hurt during my first months at work?

Paid sick days in Iceland come from the collective agreement and grow with the months you have worked. So a new worker has fewer paid sick days than an old one, not none at all. An accident at work is treated differently and must be reported.

Tell your employer the same day, get a doctor's note, and call your union before you agree to anything about your contract. If it happened at work, make sure it is reported as a work accident.

Sick pay, accidents and your contract

Living here, honestly

No Icelandic authority writes rules about loneliness or darkness. Everything below is my own experience of living here, written in the first person on purpose. Someone else could arrive, find friends in a week, and recognise none of it. Take it as one person's story, not a rule.

What is the hardest part about living in Iceland as a foreigner?

My own experience, not an official source. For me it was not the cold or the prices. It was slowly understanding that the practical problems can be solved, and the social ones take years.

After that came the housing pressure and being far from family. What helped me was one small routine that was mine: a pool, a class, a group that met again next week. Other people I know arrived, found friends at once, and felt none of this. Both are normal.

How do you get through the winter darkness?

My own experience. What worked for me was treating the dark as a season with a routine, not a mood to wait out: go outside during the light hours even when it is grey, sleep at the same time, and plan something in January instead of just surviving it.

Many people here take vitamin D through the dark months. If low mood does not go away, that is a medical thing, and your health centre is the right door. Do not push through it alone.

Mental health and where to go

Is it hard to make Icelandic friends?

My own experience. Hard to start, very solid once it happens. The friendships I made came from doing something again and again next to people, not from talking. Plenty of people arrive and have a social life in a month, so if that is not you, nothing is wrong with you.

The practical version, as I found it: join something that meets again and again. The swimming pool, a choir, a sports club, a volunteer group, a course. Repeating, not charm, is what turned someone I knew into a friend.

What are the unwritten social rules in Iceland?

My own experience. Shower without a swimsuit before you go in a pool, take your shoes off indoors, be on time, say what you mean plainly, and do not make a scene. Small talk is short, and silence is not uncomfortable.

Two more that surprised me: nobody is impressed by job titles, and "yes, maybe" often means no. Being direct here is not rude. It is seen as the polite choice.

If your question is not here

Start from the topic pages, which are written in the same order that life actually happens: arrive, register, work, live, plan.

See all topics

Companion Iceland translates official Icelandic sources into plain language. We are not lawyers and we are not an authority. Where our page and an official Icelandic source disagree, the official source is right.

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