The Faroe Islands: Ten Attractions and Natural Wonders

Eighteen islands in the North Atlantic

The Faroe Islands are a self-governing part of the Kingdom of Denmark — eighteen steep, almost treeless, grass-green islands in the North Atlantic between Scotland, Iceland, and Norway, home to about 55,000 people and a great many sheep. The weather is famously changeable ("you can have all four seasons in a day"), the light is dramatic, and a network of sub-sea tunnels, causeways, and ferries links the islands into one easy driving loop.

The ten below are spread across the archipelago but all within a day's drive or short ferry of Tórshavn. Late spring to early autumn is the practical season; summer has near-endless daylight, and puffins are ashore roughly May to August.

1. Sørvágsvatn — 'the lake above the ocean'

The Faroes' most-photographed view: the largest lake in the islands sits behind a low ridge on Vágar, and from the cliff of Trælanípa a trick of perspective makes it look as if the whole lake is hovering far above the sea. A well-worn path (about 45 minutes each way, with a landowner's fee) leads along the lakeshore to the viewpoint and the 30-metre Bøsdalafossur waterfall, where the lake overflows straight into the ocean.

It is on Vágar, the airport island, so often the first or last stop of a trip.

2. Gásadalur and Múlafossur

Gásadalur, a hamlet of a handful of houses on a green ledge above the sea on western Vágar, has the islands' signature waterfall: a stream runs off the cliff edge in a single drop to the Atlantic, framed by the village and the peaks of Mykines beyond. It is a short walk from the car park.

It is at its best in soft light or with the sun low; midday tour buses can make the small viewpoint crowded.

3. Saksun

Saksun, at the head of a valley on northwest Streymoy, is a scatter of turf-roofed farm buildings and a small church around a tidal lagoon, once a deep natural harbour until a storm blocked it with sand. It is one of the most idyllic spots in the islands.

Visitor pressure led to a fee to visit the lagoon being introduced in 2023; keep to marked paths. The turf-roofed Dúvugarðar farmhouse is a small museum.

4. Tórshavn and Tinganes

Tórshavn ("Thor's harbour") is one of the smallest capitals in the world, and its old core, Tinganes, is a knot of red-ochre timber houses with grass roofs on a rocky spit between two harbours — where the Faroese parliament, the Løgting, first met in the Viking Age — one of the oldest parliamentary meeting places in the world. The Løgting has since moved, but the home-rule government still sits here. The old town lanes of Reyn behind it, the fortress of Skansin, and a lively small-scale food and music scene fill a day.

5. Mykines

Mykines, a single-village island at the western edge of the archipelago, is the puffin island — a clifftop walk past thousands of burrow-nesting puffins to a lighthouse on the islet of Mykineshólmur, reached by a 40-metre footbridge, with gannets and other seabirds on the surrounding cliffs. It is reached by a small ferry from Sørvágur or by helicopter, both weather-dependent.

From May to August a fee applies for visitors arriving by ferry, and it includes a mandatory guide.

6. Kalsoy and the Kallur lighthouse

Long, thin Kalsoy — nicknamed "the recorder" for the tunnels bored through it — is reached by ferry from Klaksvík. From the end-of-the-road village of Trøllanes, a short walk leads out to the small Kallur lighthouse on a spectacular grassy spine, with cliffs dropping away on both sides and views to neighbouring islands. Its northern tip stood in for Russia's Kuril Islands in the James Bond film No Time to Die.

The path can be dangerous in wind or cloud, and a landowner fee applies.

7. Tjørnuvík and Streymoy's north

Tjørnuvík, at the northern end of Streymoy, is a black-sand-beach village facing two sea stacks off the island of Eysturoy — Risin og Kellingin, "the Giant and the Witch", of a folk tale about two giants from Iceland turned to stone by the sunrise while trying to carry the Faroes away. The drive there, over the Streymoy mountains past the Fossá waterfall (one of the highest in the islands, dropping 140 metres in two stages), is one of the best in the country.

Surfers use the beach; the water is cold and the currents strong.

8. The Vestmanna bird cliffs

On the northwest coast of Streymoy, near the village of Vestmanna, boat trips run along sea cliffs up to 700 metres high, nosing into caves and narrow gorges beneath ledges packed with nesting guillemots, razorbills, fulmars, and puffins. It is the classic Faroese boat excursion, weather permitting, in season.

Boat trips also run to the sea stacks off Vágar (Drangarnir and Tindhólmur).

9. Klaksvík and the northern islands

Klaksvík, on Borðoy, is the second town — a working fishing port wrapped around a narrow inlet, with a striking modern church (Christianskirkjan, consecrated in 1963) whose roof beams hold a traditional eight-man Faroese boat. It is the gateway to the six northeastern islands (the Norðoyar), linked by tunnels and the Kalsoy ferry, with the village of Viðareiði, the northernmost settlement in the Faroes. Across the sound on Eysturoy, Gjógv is famous for its natural harbour in a sea-filled gorge.

10. The villages and the sheep tracks

Beyond the headline spots, the pleasure of the Faroes is in wandering: Bøur and its church looking out to the sea stacks; Trøllkonufingur, "the Witch's Finger", a rock spike on Vágar; and Kirkjubøur on Streymoy, with the ruins of the Magnus Cathedral, begun around 1300, and Kirkjubøargarður, said to be the oldest still-inhabited wooden house in the world.

A note on the grindadráp, the traditional communal pilot-whale hunt: it is legal, defended locally as sustainable, and widely condemned abroad. Visitors may come across it or its aftermath.

The Faroes are a compact self-drive trip — four or five days links most of this list from a Tórshavn base, with an extra day for a Mykines crossing if the weather cooperates.