1. Iceland (Lonely Planet)

Lonely Planet is my favourite series with the right amount of detail, well written and accurate.

2. Iceland (Rough Guide)

The Rough Guide is also a very good travel series. This one has an excellent road map of Iceland included, and is a bit more detailed than Lonely Planet.

1. Flags of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima

Directed by Clint Eastwood. Released 2006.

"It's (Iwo Jima) a shrine for them (the Japanese) because there's 12,000 unaccounted-for bodies still there, so I knew they weren't going to go for the pyrotechnics of a re-invasion, so we went to Iceland, which is also a geothermal island with black sand beaches. Iceland in August is probably the same climate as Iwo in February, so it all worked out fine and then we went back to Iwo for a few tune-ups."

The location was a small, beautiful, black beach called Sandvik near the town of Keflavik, near the airport.

2. Batman Begins

Directed by Christopher Nolan. Released 2005.

Batman Begins uses the giant Vatnajokull glacier and one of its valley glaciers Svínafellsjökull as a stand-in for the Himalayas, probably Tibet. The scenes in Iceland show Bruce Wayne’s transformation into Batman, with the glacier featured as Wayne climbs up the side of the glacier to what is supposed to be a Buddhist monastery. Another key scene was the sword fight between Wayne and his mentor on a frozen lake. The group stayed at the Hótel Skaftafell in Freysnes.

I give credit to the Batman Begins crew, because when I visited Svínafellsjökull in July 2006, I could not see any remnants of their filming.

3. James Bond: Die Another Day

Released 2002. The frozen lake ice-chase scene in Die Another Day was filmed at the Jökulsárlón lagoon, with Bond's Aston Martin getting a jump on Zao's Jaguar. The lagoon was damned so the water froze over entirely.

4. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

Released 2001. Lara flew to an ice lake in Siberia, nicely substituted with Iceland's craggy south east coast featuring the Jokulsarlon Glacier Lagoon.