The west fjords, and the whales that may be watching

The west fjords occupy a peninsula that juts north-west from the rest of Iceland, joined to the mainland by a strip of land so narrow it is sometimes described, not entirely fairly, as nearly its own island. Roads here are slower and more circuitous than almost anywhere else in the country, looping around each fjord rather than cutting across, which has kept the region among the least populated and least visited parts of Iceland even as tourism elsewhere has grown considerably.

Fewer than ten thousand people live across the entire peninsula today, a small fraction of Iceland's already small population, spread thinly among fishing villages that in some cases are only reachable by a single mountain pass road closed for parts of the winter. It is, by a comfortable margin, the emptiest corner of an already sparsely populated country.

Reaching a coast the road struggles with

A ship, unlike a car, doesn't need to follow the coastline's every indent, and cruises calling at Ísafjörður, the west fjords' largest town, reach a part of Iceland many visitors on a standard ring-road trip never see at all. Ísafjörður itself sits on a narrow sand spit, surrounded on three sides by water and hemmed in by steep fjord walls, a genuinely dramatic setting for a town of only a few thousand people, and one that has depended on fishing for its livelihood for centuries.

The town's older wooden buildings, several dating from the eighteenth century and clustered near the harbour, are unusually well preserved for a working Icelandic fishing port, having largely escaped the fires and demolitions that reshaped many of the country's older towns. It rewards an hour on foot rather than a quick look from the quay.

What the waters actually hold

Icelandic waters, particularly around the north and west coasts, support a genuinely rich population of whales, drawn by the nutrient-rich meeting of cold and warmer currents; humpback, minke and occasionally larger species are regularly recorded by operators running dedicated watching trips from towns like Húsavík and Akureyri further round the coast. It is worth being honest about what "watching" actually means: sightings are common enough that operators build a business around them, but no reputable trip promises a guaranteed encounter with a wild animal, and the honest ones say so plainly.

Húsavík in particular has built much of its modern identity around whale watching, and the town's small whale museum sets out the science and the history of the industry that preceded it, whaling itself, with a fairly unflinching account of how the town's relationship with these waters has changed over the past century. It is a more honest introduction than a boat trip alone provides.

Akureyri and the fjord it sits on

Eyjafjörður, Iceland's longest fjord, runs deep inland to Akureyri, the country's second city, and cruises reaching this far north often pair a call there with the west fjords earlier in the same itinerary, giving a genuine sense of how much of Iceland's coastline is fjord rather than open shore. Akureyri itself, despite sitting close to the Arctic Circle, has a noticeably mild local climate for its latitude, sheltered by the mountains around the fjord, and a real botanical garden to show for it.

That garden, established in the early twentieth century, grows a surprising range of species for a town this far north, including a number that struggle considerably further south in more exposed parts of Iceland; the fjord's shelter and the warmth carried up the coast by ocean currents do more for Akureyri's microclimate than its latitude alone would ever suggest.

Seabirds, and the rest of the coast's wildlife

Whales aren't the only reason to watch the water here; the cliffs and skerries along this coast support large seabird colonies, including puffins in season, and seals are a regular, if similarly unguaranteed, sight along quieter stretches of shoreline. None of it is arranged for visitors. It is simply what a genuinely rich, cold-water coastline supports, and a route through the west fjords and Eyjafjörður puts a ship closer to it than almost any road trip through the interior ever could.

The Látrabjarg cliffs, at the west fjords' far western tip, are among the largest bird cliffs in the North Atlantic and a genuine stronghold for puffins in the summer breeding season, alongside guillemots and razorbills in considerable numbers. A ship passing this stretch of coast sees a landscape working exactly as it would without a single visitor watching, which is, in the end, the honest appeal of the whole region.