I get asked by people wanting to visit Iceland what they should do while they're there. Rather than re-type (and mostly forget) the whole thing I just give them a link to this.
...as if you didn't know how to use Google.
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I'm partial to The Lonely Planet guides whenever I visit other places. I haven't checked the one for Iceland but it's probably fine.
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Have a browse around the Wikivoyage page for Iceland
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Generally any town / area you'll want to visit has its own English-language webpage page for what's going on. E.g. this page for Akureyri.
Take the FlyBus from the airport. A taxi would be ridiculously expensive. It stops at BSÍ which is around 1 km from downtown Reykjavík.
You can take a normal city bus (ISK cash only, and they don't give change) or a Taxi. Or pay BSÍ extra to ferry you to a pre-approved list of ~40 affiliate hotels in a minibus (more expensive than a bus, cheaper than a Taxi).
They don't include all hotels (presumably only the ones that pay them) so if you're really clever you'll know some of the hotels in the vicinity of your hotel and ask them to take you there instead, then just walk the rest of the way.
I usually just take a taxi or a bus. If I'm not in a hurry the bus is fine, if I'm in a hurry the taxi is faster than waiting for the BSÍ people to figure out how 30 confused tourists should be split into various small shuttle cars.
This is mostly in downtown or within walking distance.
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Hanging around at Stofan is nice. They have some good beers on tap, cozy atmosphere. Free WiFi (almost everyone does, really).
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Check out Kolaportið on the weekends. It's Reykjavíks flea market.
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Prikið is nice if you have a hangover. They have a hangover burger served with painkillers.
It's an awesome place, I once saw a perplexed American order a burger there that he didn't get for 40 minutes. When he asked the stoned looking waiter about the status of his order he was told "Sorry, I was hungry so I ate it, hang on, I'll make you another one".
It's a cool place. Go there once, don't go there twice.
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Another good place to get burgers is in a back room at B5 just diagonally across the street from Prikið. You can't see it from the street, although there's a sign at B5 advertising it. They serve burgers until 22:00 so they make for a good late dinner after having been out drinking.
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Lækjarbrekka is an expensive restaurant, nice for your last day out. I recommend the puffin, they also have whale and other interesting Icelandic stuff.
Don't go for the beef (actually, this applies anywhere in Iceland). It's nothing special and you can probably get much better beef wherever you're from. Go for lamb if you want the staple "nice meat they eat around here" meat.
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I've also heard really good things about the Fish Market. It's a restaurant serving (as you might guess) fish and other seafood.
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Sushibarinn (couldn't find a Google Maps link, it's on Laugavegur 2, 101 Reykjavík. They had Minke Whale sushi last I checked.
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The Noodle Station on Skólavörðurstígur 21a has some really nice Thai noodles. They have a chicken/beef/vegetable broth to choose from.
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It's nice to go to Hallgrímskirkja and look over downtown. It's the giant (by Icelandic standards) church. If you can't find it you're blind and wouldn't enjoy the view anyway.
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Perlan is also a nice viewing point way. It's in the middle of the outdoor area most accessible from downtown. There's some remains of old bunkers there from the 1940s (around here) and it's generally a nice woody area.
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There's a bakery on Lækjargata. Ask them for bread for the birds, head down to the pond (Tjörnin) and watch the killer seagulls rip apart the ducks you're trying to feed it to.
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Since you're on a tropical island go to the beach and bathe in the warm waters (it's located here).
Bring a bikini and snap some photos to send your friends back home to convince them that you've truly gone nuts.
You can also venture out to the actual sea there and swim in it. It's probably around 8-10 centigrade. Lots of people do this daily in the morning to freshen up, it's heaps of fun. I won't be held responsible for hypothermia, nipples hard enough to cut glass and/or death.
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Finally if you just wander around Laugavegur (main shopping street), and Austurstræti (getting into the bar district) and Skólavörðustígur (the road going up from Laugavegur diagonally towards Hallgrímskirkja) you'll find lots of odd shops, cafes etc.
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Buy some Minke whale and grill it. Here's a howto I posted on YouTube a while ago. Don't overcook it.
Don't worry about the ethics of eating whales. They're just like deer, but with fins. Just think about it, finned deer?, how presumptuous of them.
More seriously though just on the Icelandic continental shelf there's about 50 thousand of them. Iceland hunts less than 500 of them a year. They're doing just fine, and they're delicious.
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Melabúðin in Reykjavík is (along with Kolaportið) a really nice store to buy all sorts of odd Icelandic stuff like pickled ram testicles (yummy!) and other stuff, see this for a summary. Try the dried fish (Harðfiskur) with some Icelandic butter (Smjör). It's delicious.
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Thai Matstofan is nice for some sloppy Thai food for brunch. This is under Icelandic food because we have lots of Thai immigrants, there's at least 50 of them.
Fuck yeah, if you wanted to see a city you could have stayed at home.
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Firstly consider renting a car. It's expensive, but there's no public transport outside of buses in major cities/towns. There's just flights (flugfelag.is) and tour companies like Iceland excursions (icelandexcursions.is).
On the other hand to get anywhere interesting you need a 4x4 anyway, which is expensive to rent, and if you don't know how to operate it in the highlands (which includes stuff like fording rivers).
So you can also backpack around the interior and take one of the privately run busess that pass by once or twice a day. But it requires a fair amount of planning, possibly reserving cabin space, or sleeping in a tent etc.
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For car rentals I've had a good experience with Sad Cars, they rent out old beaters at around a third of the price as the other rentals like Hertz which give you semi-new cars at higher prices.
They also give you the car with whatever fuel happens to be on it, and you return it with whathever, so they don't rip you off on having to pay for a full tank for a weekend in the city.
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The Golden Circle is a classic day-long excursion from Reykjavík. So named because it includes a massive waterfall called Gullfoss (Golden falls).
Not to be confused with a golden shower, see my upcoming travel guide on Germany for that.
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I have some friends at Icelandic Mountain Guides. Something to check out for guided summiting / ice climbs etc.
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Landmannalaugar / Þórsmörk are ridiculously beautiful (did a run there last year, see this). Hassle to get to though, worth it. You might die of exposure, more on that below.
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Check out Vatnajökulsþjóðgarður, biggest national park in Europe covering 12% of the country. Much of it accessible by driving along the ring road (any car will do) along the south.
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Drive across the interior. E.g. over road F26. Here's a video of someone doing it on a 4x4 (which you'll need). Kjalvegur is another good one, pretty much the same thing but on the other side of Hofsjökull, here's another timelapse.
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This is just my bias since I grew up there, but consider going to the Troll peninsula (Tröllaskagi) in the north-west of Iceland by taking a plane from Reykjavík to Akureyri.
It's the most glacially carved area of the country, here via NASA Landsat. See this visitor page for some stuff to do. For some idea of the scenery here's Ólafsfjörður where I grew up and this video gives you a good idea of what the scenery is like.
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If you're going there stop by the tourist center in Akureyri for brochures, tours, maps etc. There's a really good hiking map of the peninula that you can buy there.
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Do whale watching. You can also do this in the south but it's better out of the north, either from Ólafsfjörður or from Húsavík. Here are some of the videos I took when I went in 2012. These are all Humpback whales (nobody eats them because they're not delicious).
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If you're in Ólafsfjörður or number of other places by the sea walk on down and get attacked by Arctic Tern. It's heaps of fun. They won't actually bash your head in, but they'll make an honest attempt.
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The next town over, Siglufjörður, has a beautiful waterfront. There's two cafés/restaurants there by the waterfront (one yellow-ish, one red, right next to each other). Can't remember which one but I had the daily catch (a Seawolf) in one of them and it was the best fish I've ever had (and I've been to Japan). Recommended.
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Mývatn is 1h:30m drive from Akureyri and is really nice. It's a wetland area that's been partially overrun by a series of eruptions, the last one just a few decades ago (so you can see some semi-fresh lava).
Jarðböðin við Mývatn are like the Blue Lagoon, but smaller, have a fantastic view, and less filled with tourists.
Hiking Hverfjall or going for a stroll in Dimmuborgir is also nice. I've unicycled around Dimmuborgir, try that.
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You can drive from Mývatn to Askja and bathe in Víti. I've done both, make sure it's a bit windy though or you might die from sulfur poisoning because it'll settle on the top of lake Víti during calm days.
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I haven't been but I hear Vestmannaeyjar is really nice. It's an island cluster to the south of the mainland and the only island outside of the mainland with a notable population (i.e. more than 400 people). It's a bit like France I hear ("nice country, too bad about the french"), Iceland's bible belt, volcanic, so a bit like a combination of Hawaii and Salt Lake City.
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Greet everyone you meet with "Ég er heimskur útlendingur" (eg er heim-skur uht-len-din-gur). It means "how do you do?".
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Go swimming. Iceland has a crapload of cheap geothermally heated water so even small towns of 1000 people or so have a sizable swimming pool. Check out swimminginiceland.com. In downtown Reykjavík you might want to check out Sundhöll Reykjavíkur after a hangover (outdoor hot pots, indoor swimming pool, outdoor area to lie around in the sun, mainly interesting for how retro it is), Laugardalslaug (biggest in the captial area, I think). In Akureyri go to this one, or take a drive out to Þelamörk and go there instead.
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Try Egils Malt (a ~2.25% lite malty beer-ish thing) and Egils appelsín (a sugary soda). Combine them 50/50, adding the Malt afterwards to avoid foam overload. Delicious. I always buy a full bag of them to bring back with me on the plane. You'll either love it or hate it.
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Try Icelandic candy, patricularly anything liquorice, or chocolate coated liquorice, OR or liquorice coated chocolate coated liquorice. What will they think of next?!