Faroe Islands

We chose the Faroe Islands instead of Iceland. By 2024, Iceland had gotten crowded in a way that felt incompatible with what we were planning — a small, quiet, unofficial wedding in the kind of landscape that makes you feel completely alone in the world. The Faroes fit that description perfectly. Eighteen islands in the middle of the North Atlantic, a population of around 55,000, grass-roofed houses clinging to clifftops above fjords, and almost nobody else on the trails.

We went in late August, found a Faroese photographer, and based ourselves in Klaksvík — the northern islands' main town — in a fishermen's cabin with views we still think about. We also had our hiking plans derailed by wind. Twice. Not rain, not cold — just wind at the cliff edge doing something we chose not to argue with.

That's the honest version of the Faroe Islands: extraordinarily beautiful, really remote, and entirely on their own terms. The North Atlantic weather is real, the trails require flexibility, and the best parts of the islands — the abandoned villages, the unmarked coastal paths, the moment when the fog lifts and you see a waterfall dropping straight into the ocean — arrive on their own schedule. You work around it. It's absolutely worth it.

The Faroes are an autonomous territory within the Kingdom of Denmark, sitting roughly halfway between Norway and Iceland. They are not trying to be either.

Our Faroe Islands coverage: Tórshavn · Klaksvík · Kalsoy · Hiking · Hotels · Northern Lights · When to Go