The Westfjords capital — the most dramatic fjord in Iceland, Vigur Island puffins, and a remote fishing town cut off by winter avalanches
Ísafjörður is the largest settlement in the Westfjords (Vestfirðir) — Iceland's most remote and sparsely populated region, a peninsula of fjords and steep mountain walls connected to the rest of Iceland by a single seasonal road (Route 60) that closes in bad weather. The town sits at the end of the Ísafjarðardjúp (the 'deep of Ísafjörður' — a large fjord complex reaching 75km into the Westfjords interior), on a narrow sand spit extending into the fjord with the 800m mountains rising directly above. The Westfjords landscape is the Iceland that exists before tourism infrastructure: the fjords h…
The Westfjords were among the first areas of Iceland to be settled by Norse farmers in the 9th century — the sagas make multiple references to farms in the Ísafjarðardjúp area. The remoteness that made the Westfjords the last region to be connected by road (the Westfjords highway was only paved in the 1970s and 80s) also preserved its character: the population has declined from a peak of 12,000 in the 1960s to around 7,000 today as fishing modernised and young people moved to Reykjavík. Ísafjörður's old town (the Nedstikaupstaður district, dating to the 18th century) is the best-preserved exa…