Isafjordur Is the Iceland Port Most Cruises Skip for the Ring Road

Most people picture Iceland and think Reykjavik. They think of the geysers and the Blue Lagoon and the crowds. Isafjordur sits in the far northwest and almost none of that applies here.

This is the main town of the Westfjords. It is a thumb of land that hangs off the top corner of Iceland. Roads barely reach it. For most of human history the easiest way in was by boat, which is exactly how you will arrive.

The fjord itself does the heavy lifting. Your ship sails into a narrow arm of water with mountains going straight up on both sides. The town is tucked onto a flat sandspit that curls into the harbor. You walk off the ship and you are already in it.

Here is the first thing worth knowing. The Westfjords are home to Dynjandi, a waterfall that spills down the rock in a wide fan that gets broader as it falls. Most shore excursions here point straight at it. It is the kind of thing you look at for ten minutes and then keep looking at anyway.

The second thing is about scale. Isafjordur is small. A few thousand people live here, and that is a feature, not a warning. You can walk the old wooden houses near the harbor in an afternoon. The fish was the economy, the fish built the town, and the town never bothered to pretend otherwise.

This is also a jumping off point for Hornstrandir, a nature reserve to the north with no roads and no permanent residents. Arctic foxes outnumber people there. You are not hiking it on a port day, but it tells you what kind of neighborhood you have sailed into.

A port day here is quiet by design. There is no shopping district engineered for cruise passengers. There is weather that changes its mind, coffee that is better than it needs to be, and a horizon that makes the rest of your trip feel loud.

Fewer ships call here than call on the south coast, so when Isafjordur shows up on an itinerary it is usually a deliberate choice by the cruise line. That is a good sign. If you want help finding a sailing that actually stops here instead of racing past it, that is literally what we do.

Fair winds and following seas,
Captain Steve