The Most Beautiful Water Wonders in the Faroe Islands
6 places · updated 13 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful water wonders in the Faroe Islands are Sørvágsvatn, Risin og Kellingin and Mykines. The list covers 6 lakes, waterfalls, islands and beaches. Last updated 13 October 2026.
The Faroe Islands are built from layer upon layer of basalt, laid down by lava flows tens of millions of years ago as the North Atlantic opened and then carved by glaciers and the ocean. The result is a group of eighteen steep islands with almost no gentle ground, where lakes perch high above the sea, cliffs fall hundreds of metres straight into the water and stacks of rock stand alone offshore, all under a cool, wet and constantly changing sky.
Sørvágsvatn on Vágar is the largest lake in the archipelago and seems to hang above the ocean when seen from the cliff of Trælanípa, before it empties over the Bøsdalafossur waterfall into the sea. Off the northern tip of Eysturoy, the twin stacks of Risin og Kellingin rise from the waves. Nearby off Vágar, the islet of Tindhólmur carries a jagged ridge of five sharp peaks, and the neighbouring sea stacks of Drangarnir include one pierced by a large arch.
At the western edge of the islands, Mykines is home to large colonies of puffins and gannets, its lighthouse reached by a footbridge over a narrow gorge to the islet of Mykineshólmur. To the south, Lítla Dímun is the smallest of the main islands and is uninhabited, a steep green dome rising from the sea that is often capped by its own cloud and grazed only by sheep.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sørvágsvatn | Lake | |
| 2 | Risin og Kellingin | Stack | |
| 3 | Mykines | Island | |
| 4 | Tindhólmur | Island | |
| 5 | Drangarnir | Stack | |
| 6 | Lítla Dímun | Island |
01 Sørvágsvatn
Faroe Islands · 21.7 km from Tórshavn62.050° N 7.233° W
kallerna · CC BY-SA 4.0 Trælanípa means 'slave cliff,' and local tradition holds that during the Viking and medieval settlement of the islands, enslaved people no longer able to work were pushed to their deaths from this exact edge — a grim historical layer under a spot now visited almost entirely for photography.
Did you know? In 1941 a Catalina flying boat of RAF Coastal Command became the first aircraft to land on the lake, which the British used as a seaplane base.
02 Risin og Kellingin
Faroe Islands · 35.8 km from Tórshavn62.323° N 7.104° W
Sanshiro KUBOTA from London, UK · CC BY 2.0 The legend that named them was collected in V. U. Hammershaimb's Færøsk Anthologi of 1891. The giants of Iceland, the story goes, envied the Faroes and sent a giant and his wife to drag the islands north. They came to Eiðiskollur, the north-westernmost mountain; the giant waited in the sea while the witch climbed up with a rope to bind the islands and heave them onto his back.
Did you know? In calm weather small boats can pass through the narrow sound between the Giant and the Witch.
03 Mykines
Faroe Islands62.106° N 7.597° W
Erik Christensen · CC BY-SA 3.0 Mykines belongs to the oldest part of the Faroes, built some 60 million years ago from successive flows of fluid lava. Softer layers of volcanic tuff between the basalt sheets have eroded faster, leaving ledges that make some of the richest bird cliffs anywhere. The island's highest point, Knúkur, reaches 560 metres. In the valley of Korkadalur on the north side stand great basalt columns known as the Stone-wood.
Did you know? The island's endemic house mouse may descend from mice brought by settlers as early as the sixth century.
04 Tindhólmur
Faroe Islands · 32.6 km from Tórshavn62.078° N 7.435° W
Erik Christensen · CC BY-SA 3.0 What the legend doesn't need to explain is why nobody moved back: Tindhólmur has no harbour, no flat ground worth farming at scale, and a sheer basalt face on its southern side that makes it one of the more striking silhouettes in the Faroe archipelago, especially at sunset when boat tours time their passes to catch the light.
Did you know? Tindhólmur is privately owned, and anyone landing there needs a guide with the owners' permission.
05 Drangarnir
Faroe Islands · 31.5 km from Tórshavn62.075° N 7.414° W
Erik Christensen , Porkeri. · CC BY-SA 3.0 The stacks are built of the same basalt as the rest of the Faroes, the product of lava flows laid down layer upon layer and later carved by the sea into cliffs, arches and pillars. The surrounding waters and ledges fill with seabirds between May and September.
Did you know? According to legend, Tindhólmur was abandoned after an eagle carried off a farmer's two-year-old child to its highest peak, and a ruined house there is said to be his.
06 Lítla Dímun
Faroe Islands61.633° N 6.709° W
Erik Christensen , Porkeri ( Contact at the Danish Wikipedia ) · CC BY-SA 3.0 The sheep on it today are not, as many retellings assume, a living relic of some ancient unbroken bloodline. The islet's original sheep — a small, dark, short-woolled feral breed closely related to the primitive Soay sheep of Scotland's St Kilda — was hunted to extinction; the last of them were shot in the 1860s.
Did you know? The islet appears in the medieval Færeyinga saga as the scene of a clash involving the chieftain Brestir Sigmundsson and the men of Gøta.
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 water wonders in the Faroe Islands?
- On our list, Sørvágsvatn ranks first, followed by Risin og Kellingin and Mykines.
- What is the legend of Risin og Kellingin?
- According to Faroese legend, a giant and a witch from Iceland tried to drag the Faroe Islands back home with them. They worked through the night but were caught by the rising sun and turned to stone, becoming the two sea stacks.
- Why does Sørvágsvatn look like it floats above the ocean?
- Seen from certain angles on the cliffs at its southern end, the steep drop of the sea cliffs is hidden, so the lake appears to rise far above the ocean. In reality its surface lies about thirty metres above sea level.
- How were the Faroe Islands formed?
- The islands are made of basalt from volcanic eruptions around 55 to 60 million years ago, when Greenland and Europe were drifting apart. Glaciers in later ice ages carved the fjords, valleys and cliffs seen today.
- How many lakes, waterfalls, islands and beaches are on this list in the Faroe Islands?
- The list covers 6 lakes, waterfalls, islands and beaches.