Iceland’s Wild West: Foxes & Seabirds

This ten-day circuit is Iceland’s wild west in full: seabird cliffs at Grimsey and the Westfjords, followed by the harder-won reward of Arctic fox den-watching deep inside the roadless Hornstrandir Nature Reserve — a trip that combines the accessible and the genuinely remote in one continuous itinerary.

The Westfjords form a separate peninsula connected to the rest of Iceland by only a narrow strip of land, a geographic isolation that has kept the region among the least visited and least developed parts of the country, and it is that same isolation, extended even further into Hornstrandir itself, that underpins this circuit’s entire structure. Grimsey, sitting on the Arctic Circle at the trip’s opening, and Hornstrandir, roadless and largely unpopulated at its close, represent two different flavours of Icelandic remoteness — one an isolated island reached by short boat crossing, the other a mainland peninsula abandoned by its last residents decades ago. Between them, the Westfjord cliffs supply the itinerary’s most dramatic seabird scenery, sheer basalt walls dropping directly into the North Atlantic and hosting colonies dense enough to rival anywhere else in the North Atlantic seabird world.

The seabird chapter opens the trip, with a crossing from Akureyri to Grimsey Island for a full day among its clifftop puffin, razorbill and Arctic tern colonies, sitting directly on the Arctic Circle. From there, the trip transfers to Ísafjörður in the Westfjords, gateway to both a further day at the region’s towering seabird cliffs — dense with puffins and guillemots — and the boat crossing into Hornstrandir itself.

Once across, the trip shifts entirely in character: settling in near the reserve’s fox dens for a full day watching and photographing activity, including pups, followed by a second day combined with a coastal walk along the reserve’s seabird cliffs. A further day explores deeper into Hornstrandir’s tundra and coastline for a wider range of encounters, before a final morning of fox photography and the boat crossing back to Ísafjörður.

Timed for June and July, the trip captures the narrow overlap between peak seabird breeding activity and the height of fox den activity with pups above ground — a specific seasonal window that makes combining both halves of this itinerary possible in a single visit.

Threading together Grimsey, the Westfjords and Hornstrandir within one ten-day trip requires careful sequencing around two separate weather-dependent crossings — the flight or ferry to Grimsey, and the boat into Hornstrandir — and operators experienced with this specific route build in enough slack to absorb a delay at either point without collapsing the rest of the schedule. Guides who work this full circuit regularly tend to have relationships spanning both the seabird colonies and the fox research community in Hornstrandir, giving genuine continuity of local knowledge across a trip that covers such different terrain.

This is the most complete wildlife trip Iceland’s western regions have to offer, for travellers who want both the accessible spectacle of the country’s great seabird cliffs and the harder-earned reward of genuine wilderness fox-watching in one of Europe’s last roadless nature reserves. At ten days it asks for real commitment and changeable Arctic weather along the way, but delivers a far fuller picture of this corner of Iceland than either half could offer alone.

Ten days spent moving between an Arctic Circle island, a dramatic mainland coastline and a roadless nature reserve gives a far fuller sense of Iceland’s western regions than any single stop could offer on its own.