[4] Jökulsárlón has been a setting for four Hollywood movies: A View to a Kill, Die Another Day, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and Batman Begins, as well as the reality TV series The Amazing Race.

Icebergs gather at the mouth of the lake's shallow exit, melt down into smaller ice blocks, and roll out into the sea.

The huge blocks of ice that calve from the edge of Vatnajökull are about 30 m (98 ft) high, which fills the lagoon stocked with icebergs.

[6][9][10][11] Some icebergs appear naturally sculpted on account volcanic ash from ancient eruptions that partly covers them.

Large numbers of seabirds, particularly Arctic terns, which nest nearby, gather to catch herring, trout, salmon, krill and other fish.

Breiðamerkursandur (the large sand deposits in the area) is the main habitat of the Arctic skua (Stercorarius parasiticus).

The skuas, fat and dark in colour with white wingtips, are said to be aggressive "pirates of the seas", which harass other birds as big as gannets.

[13] The first settlers arrived in Iceland around AD 870, when the edge of the tongue of Breiðamerkurjökull glacier was about 20 km (12 mi) further north of its present location.

During the Little Ice Age between 1600 and 1900, with lower temperatures prevailing in these latitudes, the glacier had grown by up to about 1 km (0.62 mi) from the coast at Jokulsá River, by about 1890.

[14] Later that same year Fell and other public land surrounding Jökulsárlón got protected as a part of Vatnajökull National Park.

The unique qualities of Vatnajökull National Park are primarily its great variety of landscape features, created by the combined forces of rivers, glacial ice, and volcanic and geothermal activity.

The National Park aims to preserve unimpaired the natural beauty of the park for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of this and future generations.A coffer dam was constructed near the Glacial River Bridge that spans Jökulsárlón to build a row of protective measures of stone boulders to prevent any erosion of the foundation of the pillars of the bridge.

This coffer dam enabled the Icelandic road administration to create workable access for the power shovel digger to place the row of stone protective measures, which would also divert the icebergs from hitting the bridge pillars, thus avoiding damage to the structure.

In 1985, the premiere of the James Bond movie A View to a Kill marked the start of commercial boat tours on the lake.

For the past few years, the company has carried 60,000 to 70,000 passengers annually; since the first commercial boat tour, about 900,000 tourists have taken the excursion.

Jökulsárlón and the Breiðamerkurjökull glacier have been part of the James Bond films A View to a Kill (1985) and Die Another Day (2002), Batman Begins (2005),[4] Beowulf and Grendel (2005), Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) and Dilwale [5][12] The popularity of the lake has been further boosted by the TV coverage provided live from Jökulsárlón on the American TV program Good Morning America in southeast Iceland, on 13 November 2006.

In October 2014, scenes of French singer Indila's music video "Love Story" were filmed at the lagoon.