Iceland 2025

June 17th, 2025 - The Westfjords

We decid­ed to dri­ve to the West­fjords. Our first des­ti­na­tion was the Dyn­jan­di water­fall. That is a dis­tance of 200 km! We also checked the Ice­landic traf­fic web­site to make sure the roads were pass­able, but every­thing was green.

The West­fjords (Vest­firðir) are Ice­land’s most remote region – almost an island in its own right, con­nect­ed to the rest of the coun­try only by a nar­row strip of land. Despite cov­er­ing an area of almost 9,000 km², only around 7,000 peo­ple live here, less than two per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion. The extreme remote­ness has depop­u­lat­ed many places, and entire penin­su­las such as Horn­strandir are com­plete­ly unin­hab­it­ed in win­ter. The coast­line is spec­tac­u­lar: around a third of Ice­land’s entire coast­line is locat­ed on this penin­su­la alone. The fjords, which reach deep into the land, make short jour­neys almost impos­si­ble – a round trip in one day? Hard­ly think­able. Many roads are grav­el roads, often impass­able in win­ter. In the past, shel­ters with emer­gency sup­plies saved trav­el­ers’ lives.

His­tor­i­cal­ly, the West­fjords were a melt­ing pot: as ear­ly as the 17th cen­tu­ry, Basque whalers estab­lished sta­tions here and even devel­oped a mixed lan­guage of Basque and Ice­landic before oth­er Euro­peans followed.

Today, the region is dis­cov­er­ing its future in tourism. The 100-meter-high Dyn­jan­di, the largest water­fall in the West­fjords, is con­sid­ered a hid­den gem. Fish­ing tourism is also boom­ing: cod, hal­ibut, and cat­fish can be caught off the coast – a par­adise for sport fishermen.

The West­fjords are thus a place of con­trasts: remote and rugged, but rich in sto­ries, nat­ur­al won­ders, and qui­et beauty.

How­ev­er, it took us a long time to reach the water­fall because we kept com­ing across incred­i­bly beau­ti­ful views along the way. You dri­ve along numer­ous fjords, and the whole area is wild and beau­ti­ful. The road was easy to dri­ve on, but there were also fre­quent grav­el roads. Over­all, how­ev­er, there was very lit­tle traf­fic. Here are some impres­sions from the trip:

The area was desert­ed, but there were sheep everywhere.

Sheep – we have been trav­el­ing for many days now. We have seen them repeat­ed­ly along the road­side and have stopped for them sev­er­al times. There are more sheep than peo­ple in Ice­land. They stand every­where in small groups, very often a moth­er with two young ones. Now a small group stood very pho­to­geni­cal­ly on an embank­ment and I final­ly pho­tographed them while they watched us curiously:

At around 4:00 p.m., we final­ly reached the impres­sive Dyn­jan­di water­fall.

Dyn­jan­di (“the roar­ing one”) is the largest water­fall in the West­fjords and is con­sid­ered one of the most beau­ti­ful in Ice­land. It plunges over 100 meters in sev­er­al cas­cades – and its shape is rem­i­nis­cent of a wide stair­case or even a wed­ding dress.

Par­tic­u­lar­ly appeal­ing: vis­i­tors to Dyn­jan­di expe­ri­ence not only one water­fall, but a whole series of small­er falls. On the way up, you will encounter six oth­er water­falls, which togeth­er com­plete the impres­sive nat­ur­al spectacle.

In the past, Dyn­jan­di was so remote that few trav­el­ers found their way there. Today, it is a high­light for any­one vis­it­ing the West­fjords – and yet, com­pared to the well-known water­falls in the south of Ice­land, it still feels like an insid­er tip.

The weath­er was over­cast, but the scenery remained impres­sive. On the way to the water­fall, we were con­stant­ly attacked by pesky mos­qui­toes, which is where the mos­qui­to nets we had brought with us proved their worth for the first time.

We con­tin­ued on to an old ship­wreck at Patreks­fjord. To get there, we drove across a plateau (Kleifa­heiði) to the fjord. The ship is, or rather was, the Garðar BA 64.

Built in Nor­way in 1912, this steel ship was one of the first ocean-going trawlers and served for decades in the fish­ing indus­try off Iceland.

After more than 70 years on the Atlantic, the ship was decom­mis­sioned in 1981—not sunk, but delib­er­ate­ly beached at Ská­padalur near Patreks­fjörður, where it remains to this day.

Today, the Garðar is Ice­land’s old­est steel ship and a pop­u­lar pho­to motif: marked by wind, salt, and time, it tells of the hard days of deep-sea fish­ing and is also a memo­r­i­al to the trans­for­ma­tion of Ice­landic fish­ing culture.

At our motorhome, we were repeat­ed­ly attacked by a bird that flew at us in mock attacks. It was an oys­ter­catch­er, a ground-nest­ing bird defend­ing its near­by nest:

As it was already after 7 p.m., we chose a camp­site for the night, the Melanes camp­site near Rauðasan­dur. The road led over the moun­tain for a while, and the red earth remind­ed us of Africa. The last stretch was adven­tur­ous­ly steep and bor­der­line for our long front-wheel dri­ve camper to dri­ve on. But we made it up and down just fine.

Once at the bot­tom, there was a mag­nif­i­cent view of a lagoon with a very wide, light reddish/yellow beach. It was rem­i­nis­cent of the Caribbean. After the black lava beach­es we had seen so far, it was a very unusu­al sight:

We dri­ve along the coast to the vil­lage of Rauðasan­dur. There was anoth­er pret­ty lit­tle wood­en church there.

There was also a nice café with a ter­race on that beau­ti­ful beach, but unfor­tu­nate­ly it had closed just an hour ear­li­er. What a shame!

We then drove to our planned camp­site, Melanes. We ini­tial­ly had con­cerns about its size, as the inter­net said it had over 300 pitch­es. But when we got there, we were com­plete­ly thrilled. There were just five campers in total on the large grassy area, all spaced far apart from each oth­er - some in tents, some in camper vans. Our motorhome was by far the largest vehi­cle. We found a very nice spot near the beach and enjoyed our din­ner with a view of the beach and the sea.

This won­der­ful place was run by an Ital­ian, who spoke Ital­ian to the guests check­ing in before us, which was quite unusu­al here in the north. The site does not offer any sup­ply or dis­pos­al facil­i­ties and only has a few elec­tri­cal hookups at the edge. We man­aged to get one. The camp­site is there­fore more suit­ed to autarchic campers. How­ev­er, we man­aged fine for one night with our water sup­plies and the lack of toi­let dis­pos­al facil­i­ties. After din­ner, we took a short walk on the beach to watch the sun­set, but we had to cut it short. The mos­qui­toes were a real nui­sance here too.