The Most Beautiful Places in the Faroe Islands
12 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful places in the Faroe Islands are Sørvágsvatn, Gásadalur and Beinisvørð. The list covers 12 places. Last updated 13 October 2026.
The Faroe Islands are built of stacked basalt lava flows, laid down some sixty million years ago as the North Atlantic opened. Ice-age glaciers carved the plateau into steep valleys and sounds, and the sea keeps cutting the edges back into sheer cliffs, sea stacks and arches. With strong winds, salt spray and centuries of sheep grazing, the islands are almost treeless, so the bare layered rock, the grass and the ocean are the whole picture, punctuated by small villages with turf roofs.
On Vágar, the lake Sørvágsvatn seems to hover above the Atlantic when seen from the cliffs of Trælanípa, and drains over a waterfall straight into the sea. Nearby, at Gásadalur, the Múlafossur waterfall drops off a cliff onto the shore below a village that had no road tunnel until 2004. Mykines, the westernmost island, is known for its puffin colonies, and the jagged islet of Tindhólmur and the twin sea stacks of Drangarnir stand off the same coast.
Elsewhere the scale is even greater. Beinisvørð on Suðuroy and Cape Enniberg on Viðoy are among the highest sea cliffs in the North Atlantic. Off the northern tip of Eysturoy, the sea stacks Risin og Kellingin are, in legend, a giant and a witch turned to stone at dawn. Saksun's turf-roofed church overlooks a tidal lagoon, Lítla Dímun is a small uninhabited island with a cap of cloud, and Kallur Lighthouse stands on a grassy ridge on Kalsoy. Underground, the Eysturoy Tunnel has a roundabout beneath the sea, lit and decorated with sculpture.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sørvágsvatn | Lake | |
| 2 | Gásadalur | Most beautiful village | |
| 3 | Beinisvørð | Cliff | |
| 4 | Risin og Kellingin | Stack | |
| 5 | Mykines | Island | |
| 6 | Saksun | Most beautiful village | |
| 7 | Tindhólmur | Island | |
| 8 | Eysturoy Tunnel | Tunnel | |
| 9 | Drangarnir | Stack | |
| 10 | Lítla Dímun | Island | |
| 11 | Cape Enniberg | Cliff | |
| 12 | Kallur Lighthouse | Lighthouse |
01 Sørvágsvatn
Faroe Islands · 21.7 km from Tórshavn62.050° N 7.233° W
kallerna · CC BY-SA 4.0 Sørvágsvatn is the largest lake in the Faroe Islands, sitting on Vágar just tens of meters above sea level and draining to the Atlantic over the short Bøsdalafossur waterfall.
Did you know? Its deepest point, 59 metres down, lies well below sea level, even though the surface sits only about 32 metres above the ocean.
02 Gásadalur
Faroe Islands · 33.4 km from Tórshavn62.112° N 7.435° W
Mike Maguire · CC BY 2.0 Gásadalur is one of the most isolated-looking places in Europe, and until recently it truly was. The hamlet sits on the western side of Vágar in the Faroe Islands, on a shelf of green pasture enclosed by mountains: Árnafjall, at about 722 metres, to the north and Eysturtindur, about 715 metres, to the east.
Did you know? Árnafjall, the mountain rising north of the village, is the highest peak on the island of Vágar.
03 Beinisvørð
Faroe Islands61.426° N 6.767° W
kallerna · CC BY-SA 4.0 Beinisvørð is the great triangular headland on the south-west coast of Suðuroy, the southernmost of the Faroe Islands. On the land side it rises as a steep green slope; on the ocean side it simply ends, in a vertical wall of dark basalt that drops about 469 metres into the North Atlantic.
Did you know? Janus Djurhuus used the cliff as a symbol of Faroese independence in his poem 'Heimferð Nólsoyar Páls'.
04 Risin og Kellingin
Faroe Islands · 35.8 km from Tórshavn62.323° N 7.104° W
Sanshiro KUBOTA from London, UK · CC BY 2.0 Off the northern tip of Eysturoy, where the sound between Eysturoy and Streymoy opens to the North Atlantic, two dark sea stacks rise straight out of the swell: Risin og Kellingin, the Giant and the Witch.
Did you know? In July 2013 three climbers were reported to have made the first ascent of Kellingin, the more slender of the two stacks.
05 Mykines
Faroe Islands62.106° N 7.597° W
Erik Christensen · CC BY-SA 3.0 At the far western edge of the Faroe Islands, Mykines rises from the Atlantic in steep green slopes and dark basalt cliffs, crowded in summer with tens of thousands of seabirds.
Did you know? The present footbridge over the Holmgjógv gorge, built in 1989, is the third to link Mykines with its islet.
06 Saksun
Faroe Islands · 30.6 km from Tórshavn62.249° N 7.176° W
Image by sergeigussev from Pixabay Saksun sits at the inner end of a valley on the northwest coast of Streymoy, the largest of the Faroe Islands, where a handful of turf-roofed buildings look down on a round tidal lagoon enclosed by steep green mountains.
Did you know? A narrow channel still links the lagoon to the sea, but sandbanks mean only small, light boats can slip through, and only at high tide.
07 Tindhólmur
Faroe Islands · 32.6 km from Tórshavn62.078° N 7.435° W
Erik Christensen · CC BY-SA 3.0 Tindhólmur's five jagged peaks look uninhabitable, and today they are — but a local legend explains why a place with room for a farm sits empty.
Did you know? In traditional Faroese land measure the islet counts as two merkur, the unit used to value farmland in the islands.
08 Eysturoy Tunnel
Eysturoyartunnilin
Faroe Islands · 5.4 km from Tórshavn62.075° N 6.785° W
Renno Hokwerda · CC BY-SA 4.0 The Eysturoy Tunnel is a piece of infrastructure that became a sight in its own right. Opened on 19 December 2020, it runs for more than 11 km under the Tangafjørður, the sound between the islands of Streymoy and Eysturoy, and also passes under the southern end of Skálafjørður.
Did you know? On its opening day in December 2020, about 14,700 vehicles drove through the tunnel within twelve hours.
09 Drangarnir
Faroe Islands · 31.5 km from Tórshavn62.075° N 7.414° W
Erik Christensen , Porkeri. · CC BY-SA 3.0 Drangarnir is a pair of sea stacks rising from the water off the west coast of Vágar in the Faroe Islands, framed on one side by the cliffs of Vágar and on the other by the jagged islet of Tindhólmur.
Did you know? Tindhólmur behind the stacks rises to 262 metres and its jagged crest is split into five named peaks, the highest called Ytsti.
10 Lítla Dímun
Faroe Islands61.633° N 6.709° W
Erik Christensen , Porkeri ( Contact at the Danish Wikipedia ) · CC BY-SA 3.0 Lítla Dímun is the smallest of the Faroe Islands' eighteen main islands and the only one with no permanent human population — less than a square kilometre of steep grass and rock rising straight out of the sea between Suðuroy and Stóra Dímun.
Did you know? Despite covering only about 0.8 square kilometres, the island climbs to 414 metres at its summit, Slættirnir, and its lower third is sheer cliff.
11 Cape Enniberg
Enniberg
Faroe Islands · 16.3 km from Klaksvík62.383° N 6.567° W
User:Thorbjoern · CC BY-SA 3.0 At the northern tip of the Faroe Islands, the land ends in a single colossal wall of rock. Cape Enniberg rises 754 metres straight out of the North Atlantic, making it one of the highest promontories in the world.
Did you know? BirdLife International lists the north and east coasts of Viðoy as an Important Bird Area, with about 25,000 breeding pairs of Atlantic puffins.
12 Kallur Lighthouse
Faroe Islands · 20.5 km from Klaksvík62.370° N 6.812° W
Holger Weiß · CC BY-SA 3.0 At the northern tip of Kalsoy, one of the most slender islands of the Faroes, a small white lighthouse with a red band stands on a grassy promontory that ends in sheer cliffs.
Did you know? The tunnel linking Trøllanes with Mikladalur, the last stretch of road before the cape, opened only in 1985.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful places in the Faroe Islands?
- On our list, Sørvágsvatn ranks first, followed by Gásadalur and Beinisvørð.
- Why are there almost no trees in the Faroe Islands?
- Strong winds, salt spray and a cool, cloudy climate make it hard for trees to establish, and sheep grazing since the Viking age has kept the land open. Only a few sheltered plantations exist today.
- Where can you see puffins in the Faroe Islands?
- Mykines, the westernmost island, has the best-known puffin colony, on slopes facing the islet of Mykineshólmur. Puffins nest there during the summer breeding season.
- What is the legend of Risin og Kellingin?
- According to Faroese legend, a giant and a witch from Iceland tried to drag the Faroes north with a rope. They worked through the night, and when the sun rose they were turned to stone, becoming the two sea stacks off Eysturoy.
- What kinds of places are there to see in the Faroe Islands?
- In our collection, the places in the Faroe Islands are most often islands (3), cliffs (2), sea stacks (2) and villages (2).
- How many places are on this list in the Faroe Islands?
- The list covers 12 places.