I was in Iceland in the 1970s, and I can tell you that Tolkein was the first thing that came to my mind. The crumpled mossy lava flows would have made for marvellous trench-warfare scenes with orcs coming up out of the ground, and the more barren areas were completely Mordor. You can see some of the results in my own story The Huldra over on my blog. That said, logistics for the film crew would have been more challenging than NZ and the filming periods probably shorter. And you couldn't have got the supersaturated Hobbiton so well in Iceland - hardly a tree in sight, never mind the gentle groves of the Shire.
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