Sited at the foot of the prominent peak Stapafell, Arnarstapi is a tiny fishing hamlet with a breathtaking coastline. Formed of successive lava flows from Snaefellsjokull eruptions, its basalt cliffs...

Roughly 4km west of Arnastapi, Hellnar is barely a cluster of houses, only a couple of which are lived in year round. The rest are holiday homes known as ‘summerhouses’ to the Icelanders who own them....

Driving around the tip of the Snaefellsnes peninsula you’ll pass the fishing villages Hellissandur, Rif, and Olafsvik, which are all worth a visit. Off the tip of the peninsula are rich fishing ground...

Sited at the gateway to the West Fjords, Budardalur is a small service town at the head of boot-shaped Hvammsfjordur. In nearby Haukadalur, visitors can look around the excavated site of Erik the Red’...

Narrow finger-like fjords form the indented south coast of the West Fjords between Flokalundur and Bjarkalundur. Almost uninhabited but for a scattering of farms, this lonely stretch of road remains u...

Hesteyri is a dreamy little-abandoned settlement in the uninhabited Hornstrandir Nature Reserve. In 1894 Norwegians built a whaling station here, which operated until 1915.  It then became one of t...

Iceland was settled during the Viking era and the Icelandic Sagas are a great source of information about how people lived at the time and what the Vikings got up to elsewhere! In the year 2000, th...

Stykkisholmur is an attractive town of carefully restored timber houses clustered over a rocky outcrop around a picturesque harbor. There are restaurants and cafes, handicraft shops and a couple of qu...

Grundarfjordur is a working fishing town that makes a little pretense at being more. Those in the know flock here for the puffin trips in summer and in winter for the aurora borealis and the chance of...

Sited on a narrow spit of land at the foot of steep-sided Mt Eyrarfjall, the largest town in the West Fjords has a population of 2,500. As Icelandic towns go, it is one of the nicest, both for its spe...