The Westfjords are the northwest peninsula, and they are the region this guide treats differently on purpose. Visit Iceland says they stretch away from the Ring Road that most visitors follow. Steep mountains, deep fjords, and a coast it describes as shaped over 14 million years are the landscape. Getting there is not a side trip between two Ring Road hotels.
Why they take longer than the map suggests
The regional page says the Westfjords cover about 8,842 square kilometers and jut into the Denmark Strait toward Greenland. Flat-topped mountains and narrow fjords leave little room for farms. The population it gives is about 7,168 in 2024, the least of the regions, with Ísafjörður, the regional capital, at roughly 2,679. Fishing, and a growing aquaculture industry, is the economy it describes.
The sites it discusses sit hours apart by car. It says most visitors pick two or three rather than trying to collect them. Dynjandi is the waterfall it calls the best-known in the region, dropping about 100 meters through tiers. Látrabjarg is a bird cliff it calls one of the largest in Europe and the westernmost point of the continent, with puffins from early May to mid-August. Rauðasandur is a beach of about 10 kilometers of red and gold sand. Hornstrandir has been a nature reserve since 1975, uninhabited since the 1950s, and reachable only by boat. “Only by boat” is the sentence that should stop a driving plan.
The Westfjords Way is a touring route Visit Iceland describes as 950 kilometers through that rough country. The Ring Road article is direct: Route 1 skips the Westfjords. Visit Iceland’s getting-around article says a four-wheel-drive gives more freedom on gravel through settled country such as the Strandir coast, while the highland interior is another category entirely. Strandir is also where the Westfjords page places the seventeenth-century witch trials, and the museum of sorcery in Hólmavík. Gravel, fjord after fjord, and a population thin enough that services are far apart are the practical meaning of “harder.” It is not a slogan about adventure.
Ways in
Ísafjörður has domestic flights. Visit Iceland says Icelandair flies there daily from Reykjavík Domestic Airport, and that Norlandair serves Bíldudalur and Gjögur. That can be the sane way into the region if the road around every fjord is the thing you do not have days for. Strætó, the getting-around article says, reaches the Westfjords as well as the Ring Road towns, and rides longer than about two hours should usually be booked on straeto.is because a departure may be cancelled if nobody has reserved. Check that with Strætó. This guide is not their timetable.
Weather closes mountain roads and passes here as elsewhere. The Westfjords are also where Visit Iceland says winter snow can reach several meters. A summer visit is the season the tourism pages assume when they talk about bird cliffs and boat landings. Even then, a plan that also includes the south coast and the north in the same few days is a plan that will drop the Westfjords, which is an honest outcome, not a failure.
Sources
- Visit Iceland, The Westfjords
- Visit Iceland, The Ring Road
- Visit Iceland, Getting around
- Visit Iceland, Weather and climate
- Visit Iceland, Driving in Iceland