The Secret Life of Walter Mitty in Iceland

Walter's world is the negative archive of Life magazine, which is about to print its final issue and go online. Sean O'Connell sends a roll of film and says frame 25 should be the last cover — but frame 25 is missing. The film is partly set in the real Time & Life Building, the 48-storey tower on Sixth Avenue where Time Inc. moved in late 1959. At the very end, the cover finally appears on a newsstand: it shows Walter himself, sitting outside this building with a contact sheet.

Visitor guidance: Now 1271 Avenue of the Americas, an office tower in Rockefeller Center; the lobby and plaza are seen from the street.

A clue on the negatives sends Walter to Nuuk, Greenland. In a bar he finds the drunk helicopter pilot who can take him to Sean's ship, and when Walter hesitates he imagines Cheryl, the colleague he likes, singing "Space Oddity" — and runs for the helicopter. These scenes were shot in Stykkishólmur, a fishing town of colourful wooden houses on the Snæfellsnes peninsula in west Iceland, where one building was dressed up as the bar. Some "Nuuk" shots also came from Höfn, in the south-east.

Location precision: Sources don't name the building used as the bar; the pin marks the town centre.

After a leap into icy, shark-infested water, Walter reaches the ship and learns that Sean has already gone ashore, heading for an Icelandic volcano. The ship drops him at a harbour, and he sets off on a bicycle he finds by the dock. That arrival was filmed at Grundarfjörður, a small fishing town on the north coast of Snæfellsnes, with Kirkjufell rising behind the harbour. The steep, cone-shaped mountain is said to be the most photographed in Iceland, and later turned up in Game of Thrones.

Location precision: The exact quay isn't documented; the pin marks the town's harbour.

Visitor guidance: Kirkjufell and its waterfall, Kirkjufellsfoss, are a few minutes' drive west of the town.

The film's best-known sequence: on his way to the volcano, Walter rides a longboard down a long, winding mountain road through empty green hills, faster and faster, with nobody else in sight. It was filmed on the road that crosses the Fjarðarheiði pass and drops into Seyðisfjörður, a village at the end of a narrow fjord in east Iceland; Stiller did the close-ups himself, while a stunt double rode the descent. Other scenes set in the "Stykkishólmur" of the story were also shot here.

Location precision: The sequence uses several stretches of the road; the pin marks its descent towards Seyðisfjörður.

Visitor guidance: This is Route 93, a public main road with traffic: enjoy it by car or from the lay-bys, not on a board.

Sean's trail leads to Eyjafjallajökull, which he has gone to photograph, and Walter gets close just as the volcano erupts. He misses Sean again and goes home defeated. The volcano is real and its eruption is history: in 2010 this ice-capped mountain in south Iceland, small as eruptions go, threw up an ash cloud that disrupted air travel across northern and western Europe for a week. It had erupted only three times before in recorded history, in 920, 1612 and 1821.

Visitor guidance: The ice cap is seen from Route 1 along the south coast; going onto the glacier needs a licensed guide.

With a last clue, Walter flies to Afghanistan and treks into the mountains, where he finally finds Sean photographing a rare snow leopard — and learns that the missing negative was tucked inside the wallet Sean had sent him as a gift. None of this was filmed in Asia. Walter's Himalayan hike passes Skógafoss, a 60-metre waterfall on Iceland's south coast, and the high mountain scenes were shot in Vatnajökull National Park. The spray from the falls throws up a rainbow on most sunny days.

Visitor guidance: A path leads to the foot of the falls, and a long staircase climbs to a viewing platform at the top.