Seydisfjordur is a village of about seven hundred people at the head of a seventeen kilometre fjord on Iceland's east coast, reached by a mountain road that climbs to 620 metres and drops down the other side in a series of hairpins. It has a pale blue wooden church at the end of a street painted in rainbow stripes, and that one composition has made it one of the most recognisable small places in the country.
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It is also the only place in Iceland with a scheduled car ferry to mainland Europe, which gives a village this size an unlikely cosmopolitan edge, and it has an arts scene well out of proportion to its population. What it does not have is easy access in winter, and that is the single most important planning fact about it.
One honest note about the photographs. Our set is fifteen frames by five photographers and six of them are one photographer's fjord aerials. The three here are the blue church with its painted path, waterfalls on the mountainsides above the fjord, and the houses along the water, which is the village, the setting and the scale.
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What Is Here
The blue church and the rainbow street are the reason most people come, and the street is more recent than it looks. Blaa Kirkjan, the Blue Church, is a wooden building from 1922 that was floated across the fjord in pieces. The painted path leading to it was laid down in the 2010s as a community project and has become the village's signature. It is a two minute walk from anywhere in the village and it is best early, before the day visitors arrive from the cruise ships.
The waterfalls on the drive in are the other half of the place. The road down from the Fjardarheidi pass passes Gufufoss and runs beside a river that drops the whole way to the sea, with cascades on both walls of the fjord after rain. People stop for Gufufoss and almost nobody walks the ten minutes up to the pool above it.
The village itself is a nineteenth century Norwegian timber town and that is unusual in Iceland. Herring money and Norwegian merchants built it, the houses are painted clapboard rather than concrete, and several are now galleries, workshops and small restaurants. The Skaftfell centre for visual art is the hub of it. There is also a technical museum in the old telegraph station, which matters more than it sounds: the first telegraph cable connecting Iceland to Europe came ashore here in 1906.
Above the village, the Vestdalur valley gives a long walk to a lake and the remains of an old route over the mountains. On the shore of the fjord, the wreck of the oil tanker El Grillo, bombed by British aircraft in 1944, lies in forty metres of water and is a known dive site.
Tvisongur is a sound sculpture on the hillside above the village: five concrete domes, each tuned to a note of the traditional Icelandic five-tone harmony, which you reach on a twenty minute uphill walk and which sounds extraordinary if you sing in it.
When to Go
Summer, June to August, is the obvious season and the only straightforward one. The pass is open, the ferry runs weekly, the galleries and restaurants are all trading, and the light lasts most of the night. It is also when the cruise ships call, which transforms the village for a few hours at a time.
The LungA arts festival in July fills the village and is genuinely good, and accommodation goes months in advance for it.
Autumn, September to October, gives you the fjord in autumn colour with almost nobody there, and the pass still usually open. This is the best time to come if you want the place to yourself.
Winter, November to April, is where the planning gets serious. THE FJARDARHEIDI PASS IS THE ONLY ROAD IN AND IT CLOSES, sometimes for days, in snow and wind. The village stays open and inhabited, the light is beautiful and aurora is likely, but you must be prepared to be stuck on either side of the mountain. Do not plan a flight connection the day after a winter visit here.
Getting There
By car from Egilsstadir is the normal way and it is twenty seven kilometres that feel longer. Route 93 climbs from the inland valley to the Fjardarheidi pass at 620 metres, often through cloud, then descends in tight hairpins to the fjord. In good conditions it takes thirty five minutes. In poor conditions it is closed, and the closure is published rather than guessed at.
By ferry from Denmark, the Smyril Line runs a weekly car ferry from Hirtshals via the Faroe Islands, arriving here. It is the only vehicle route between Iceland and mainland Europe and it takes about two and a half days.
By bus, a scheduled service connects Egilsstadir and Seydisfjordur on weekdays in summer with a thinner winter timetable, and it does not run when the pass is shut.
Egilsstadir has the regional airport, with domestic flights from Reykjavik, and that is how most people reach this part of the country without driving the whole ring road.
If you hire a car in Iceland there is one clause worth knowing before you sign, and the FCDO states it rather than hinting at it: THE WEATHER CAN CAUSE DAMAGE TO RENTAL CARS THAT IS NOT COVERED BY INSURANCE. Strong winds are common and throw up sand and ash that strips paintwork, and in its own words BRITISH TOURISTS HAVE HAD TO PAY LARGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY to repair hire cars damaged that way. Sand and ash protection is sold as a separate product by most Icelandic hire companies and is the one add-on that is usually worth taking. Two related points: BREAKDOWN RECOVERY COSTS IN REMOTE AREAS CAN BE VERY HIGH, and OFF-ROAD DRIVING IS STRICTLY CONTROLLED and illegal outside marked tracks, with large fines, because the vegetation does not recover.
Is Seydisfjordur Safe for Women?
Seydisfjordur is as safe as a village of seven hundred people in Iceland sounds, and the hazards are the road and the weather. Iceland has among the lowest violent crime rates in the world, and in a community this size you are a recognised face within a day.
The pass is the real risk and it is a driving risk rather than a walking one. Fjardarheidi is high, exposed, frequently in cloud, and the descent to the fjord is steep with hairpins and limited barriers. In winter it carries drifting snow and ice and it closes. The published closure is not advisory: driving a closed Icelandic mountain road is how people need rescuing. Check road.is before you start, both ways, and if the forecast is poor for your departure day, leave the day before.
In December 2020 the village was hit by the largest landslide in Icelandic history in an inhabited area, which destroyed several buildings including part of the Skaftfell complex and forced an evacuation. Nobody was killed. Monitoring and defences have been installed since, and the risk is managed rather than gone: if the authorities order an evacuation here, go immediately.
One sentence on Iceland's safety page deserves to be read twice, because it names the three things that actually hurt visitors and all three are things people come here to look at: GOING TOO CLOSE TO THE OCEAN, CLIFF EDGES AND HOT SPRINGS ARE COMMON CAUSES OF ACCIDENTS IN ICELAND. That is not a generic caution. The ocean here produces sneaker waves, which run far higher up a beach than the sets before them with no visible warning and which have killed people standing on black sand looking out to sea. Cliff edges in Iceland are frequently unfenced, often undercut, and made of material that gives way. Hot springs and mud pots are at or near boiling, the ground around them can be a thin crust over water at that temperature, and the burns are severe. The rule in all three cases is the same and it is unglamorous: keep back further than feels necessary, never turn your back on the sea, and stay on the boardwalks and marked paths in a geothermal area.
Iceland runs a national system for exactly the situation a visitor gets into and the FCDO points at it by name. SAFETRAVEL ICELAND publishes route conditions and hazard guides and LETS YOU LODGE A TRAVEL PLAN, so that if you do not return someone knows where to look, and the FCDO's own instruction is to leave your plans and contact details either with your hotel or on Safe Travel. Alongside it, the Icelandic Met Office carries weather and aurora and seismic alerts, the Road Administration carries road status, and 112 is both the emergency number and an app that transmits your position to the rescue services. None of that costs anything, and in a country where SEARCH AND RESCUE MAY BE LIMITED IN SOME AREAS, which the FCDO says plainly because Iceland is inside the Arctic Circle, using it is the difference between an incident and a statistic.
Icelandic driving rules differ from British ones in ways that carry fines of up to about five hundred pounds, and the FCDO lists them. KEEP DIPPED HEADLIGHTS ON YEAR ROUND, day and night, which is a legal requirement. Speed limits are lower than in the UK and the DRINK DRIVING LIMIT IS LOWER TOO. Suitable tyres are required, including winter tyres when conditions call for them. A UK photocard licence is valid for thirty days. Beyond the rules, the conditions are the thing: the weather changes fast, distances between towns are far greater than the map suggests, SOME MAIN ROUTES ARE GRAVEL OR DIRT, and some roads and bridges are SINGLE LANE WITH PASSING AREAS. Highland and interior F-roads need four wheel drive, open only for a short part of the summer, and where they cross rivers the instruction is to DRIVE AT FIVE TO TEN KILOMETRES AN HOUR and to understand that RIVER LEVELS CAN CHANGE WITHIN THE SAME DAY. Check the Icelandic Road Administration before every driving day rather than once at the start of the trip.
Two small legal points, and the first runs the opposite way from most of Europe. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO CARRY YOUR PASSPORT IN ICELAND. The FCDO suggests carrying some form of identification such as a photocard driving licence or a copy of your passport photo page, and keeping the passport itself somewhere safe, which is a welcome contrast to Poland, Czechia and Slovenia where carrying identification is a requirement. And IT IS ILLEGAL TO SMOKE OR USE AN E-CIGARETTE in restaurants, bars, on public transport and in public buildings, with a fine attached. Riding an electric scooter after drinking is treated as drink driving.
The Seydisfjordur Packing List
A wet fjord, a 620 metre pass, a village you walk around, and the possibility of being here a day longer than planned.
Our merino base layers are 100% Australian merino at 17.5 micron, and a long sleeve merino wool base layer for women is the right first layer in every month. The east fjords are wetter than the south coast and the pattern here is drizzle and low cloud rather than dramatic storms, which is exactly the condition wool handles and cotton does not: damp, cool, and all day. Pack a heavyweight merino base layer from October, when the question stops being comfort and starts being whether you are warm while waiting for a road to open.
Over it, a Marmot PreCip Eco rain jacket and a fleece. The fjord walls funnel wind up and down the valley and the rain arrives sideways, so a hood that stays put matters more than the jacket's weight. From November add an insulated jacket under the shell.
Merrell Moab 3 waterproof hiking boots with Darn Tough merino hiking socks. The village is walkable in anything, but Tvisongur, the Gufufoss pool and the Vestdalur path are all wet grass and loose rock, and the painted street is slippery when wet, which is most of the time.
Kahtoola MICROspikes from November to April. The village streets and the walk up to Tvisongur glaze over, and so does the ground around the church where everyone stands to take the photograph.
A merino beanie, because the wind off the fjord is constant and most of the heat you lose here goes off your head.
Worth packing and not linked: a NECK GAITER and TREKKING POLES, where the only entries in our range have a contested product identity; a HEADLAMP for the short winter days, when it is dark by mid afternoon and the village has limited lighting; an insulated bottle; and one extra day's worth of anything you take daily, which is the specific advice for this village because the pass closes and the shop is small.
Recommended Tours and Experiences
Essential Resources for Women in Seydisfjordur
Emergency numbers: 112 reaches police, ambulance, fire and mountain and sea rescue from any phone including a locked mobile, and English is spoken. Download the 112 Iceland app before you travel: it sends your GPS position to the emergency services with one button and logs your location periodically so you can be found, which is the single most useful free thing a visitor to Iceland can do. For non-urgent medical advice the health service line is 1700.
The Fjardarheidi pass on Route 93 is the only road in and it closes in winter, sometimes for days. Check road.is before travelling in both directions, do not drive a closed mountain road, and do not plan a flight connection for the day after a winter visit. The village was struck by the largest landslide in Icelandic history in an inhabited area in December 2020; monitoring and defences are now in place and an official evacuation order here should be followed immediately. Weather at vedur.is.
US State Department travel advisory: the Iceland advisory. Read the current level there directly rather than relying on a figure printed in any guide.
UK FCDO travel advice: gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/iceland, and read the safety and security page rather than only the landing page, because that is where the substance sits.
Main hospital: Seydisfjordur has a health centre for routine matters. The nearest hospital is in Egilsstadir, thirty five minutes over the pass when it is open, and the regional referral hospital for the east is in Neskaupstadur. The national referral centre is Landspitali in Reykjavik, which is a flight rather than a drive. Note that the hospital and the road are the same question here: when the pass is shut, so is the route to a hospital. A UK Global Health Insurance Card or an EU European Health Insurance Card gives you state-provided medically necessary care in Iceland on the same terms as a resident, which is not the same as free: Iceland charges patient co-payments for primary care and outpatient visits, so expect to pay something and keep the receipts. Travel insurance still matters and matters more here than in most of Europe, because the FCDO notes that EMERGENCY MEDICAL ASSISTANCE AND SEARCH AND RESCUE MAY BE LIMITED IN SOME AREAS and because an evacuation from a remote part of the country is expensive. Tap water is among the best in the world and buying bottled is pointless; the hot tap smells of sulphur because it is geothermal, which is harmless. Pharmacies are apotek.
Official health authority: the Directorate of Health of Iceland, covers the health centre network in the east fjords
US Embassy: the United States Embassy in Reykjavik.
Official tourism authority: the Icelandic Tourist Board, publishes east fjord conditions and the Fjardarheidi pass status
Takeaways
Photograph the church early. The painted street is two minutes from anywhere and the cruise passengers arrive mid morning.
Check road.is for the Fjardarheidi pass before you drive either way, and in winter be willing to leave a day early.
Walk up to Tvisongur and sing in it. Five concrete domes tuned to the Icelandic five-tone harmony, twenty minutes uphill, almost always empty.
Come in late September or early October for the fjord in autumn colour with the pass still open and nobody about.
Solo women safety assessment: Seydisfjordur is about as safe as travel gets and nothing in the assessment concerns other people. Iceland has one of the lowest violent crime rates in the world, this is a village of seven hundred where you are a recognised face within a day, English is universal, the galleries and guesthouses are used to solo travellers and the arts scene draws them. The FCDO's Iceland page carries no crime warning of substance and names environmental accidents instead, pointing at SafeTravel.is. THE RISK HERE IS THE ROAD. The Fjardarheidi pass on Route 93 is the only way in, it climbs to 620 metres, it is frequently in cloud, the descent to the fjord is steep with hairpins and limited barriers, and IN WINTER IT CLOSES, sometimes for days. A published closure is not a suggestion, and driving a closed Icelandic mountain road is how people come to need rescuing. Check road.is in both directions, and if the forecast for your departure day is poor, leave the day before: do not plan a flight connection for the day after a winter visit. The second thing to know is that in December 2020 the village was hit by the largest landslide in Icelandic history in an inhabited area, which destroyed buildings and forced an evacuation without killing anyone. Monitoring and defences have been installed since and the risk is managed rather than removed, so if the authorities order an evacuation, go at once. Practically, the pass and the hospital are the same question: when Route 93 is shut, so is the route to Egilsstadir, which is why carrying an extra day of any medication you take daily is the specific advice for this village rather than general caution.
Reading On
Seydisfjordur is the east fjords and most of Iceland's visitors never reach them. The Hofn packing list covers the town on the south east coast on the way here, and the Jokulsarlon packing list and Skaftafell packing list cover the glacier lagoon and the national park beyond it. To the north the Myvatn packing list, the Dettifoss packing list and the Akureyri packing list cover the north, and the Husavik packing list covers the whale watching coast. The Reykjavik packing list covers the capital. For the country as a whole the Iceland travel guide for women and the Iceland packing list carry the transport, the weather and the practical material in full. For why wool is the right fibre for a place that is damp and cool all day rather than dramatically cold, read the guide to merino wool base layers for women. Every destination we cover is indexed at the travel packing guide for women, and the base layers are at the Roman Trail collection.
If the outer journey is calling you, the inner one usually is too. Explore SoulMap at romantrail.com/blogs/soulmap.
