Emelía, who is always called Milla, was born and raised in a small town in East Iceland called Seyðisfjörður. It is in a bottom of a narrow fjord surrounded by steep mountains. She spent her childhood climbing the cliffs in summer and skiing in the steep mountains in winter. For the last 15 years, she has spent most of her summer holidays hiking in the Icelandic wilderness with her family, friends and hiking club. Hiking, skiing, and mountaineering are her greatest passions and she decided to become a guide to use her experience professionally.
She started working for the Icelandic Mountain guides in summer 2016. She is an experienced mountain and glacier guide with a Wilderness First Responder qualification. She is also a certified driver guide.
Her favorite place in Iceland is the Eastern Highlands with Mt. Snæfell and its surroundings, where she has spent time working as National Park ranger.
Reviews from Clients
"Milla is an ideal guide -- steady, sure, encouraging, and extremely hard-working. She is a most excellent cook! She made us spectacular food -- vegetarian and vegan and cooked for the meat-eaters in our group as well. She was also a very inspirational guide. Although I'm older than her -- I want to be like Milla when I grow up. She was so strong and steadfast and gave us fabulous stories and Icelandic culture as we went along. She knows a lot about the topography, the flowers and plants, the landscape, and the history of Iceland and she shared it all with us. She did a great job of balancing the different speeds in the group -- some were very fast and some were slower and she managed to work with everyone. She is so fit and such an inspiration. She has a lot of confidence in herself which translated into confidence in our ability to try to keep up with her. Your company is very lucky to have her and we were so delighted to have her as our guide." Jill COnway
"Her enthusiasm and laid-back attitude made her seem like she was one of the group members. This made her very approachable and very easy to get along with. She was also very professional when describing parts of the trek and the area. She also did a great job at gauging how the group was doing for pace and optimised the trek where possible. If I could recommend her as a guide to someone interested in this trek, I definitely would!". Satoru, Canada
""The landscape was absolutely beautiful and I was sorry when the trek ended. I should also say that Milla Blondal was a wonderful guide, with her vast knowledge of the area and always very helpful. Indeed, having Milla as a guide made the trek very special for me. She was very concerned about our comfort and well-being, very helpful on the trail and at river crossings, and provided us with fabulous meals."
