Hornstrandir has been on my bucket list ever since I moved back to Iceland, and one overnight visit to Hesteyri a few summers ago didn´t really cut it. I wanted to hike Hornstrandir, with everything I needed on my back, sleep in a tent, meet some arctic foxes, and see the green cliffs rise straight out of the sea. My friend Gudny was down too, had a week off, and the weather forecast was perfect, so we set off in the plumber car to the westfjords, where we´d take 2 days to get to Isafjordur town.

From highway 1, we turned towards Budardalur and picked up an Icelandic hitchhiker, and his dog Saga. We stopped for a bathe in Hellulaug, close to the Bjarnslaekur ferry port, before ending our day of driving at Reykjafjardalaug. There, we had another dip, made more Icelandic friends, and camped for the night in the plumber car.

The following morning we stopped at Dynjandi waterfall, did some grocery shopping and ran some errands in Isafjordur town, and boarded the 17:00 shuttle boat to Aðalvík. Gúðny chatted up the captain while I napped, until we arrived at Sæbol and decided to jump off there and walk to Látrar (you can be dropped off there since both stops are considered part Adalvik). We expected 7 or 9 km of hiking along the shore, plenty of time when the sun doesn´t set til 11pm, but it was more like 16km, since hightide means you have to take the up-and-over route along one of the sea cliffs, and detour into the valley around one of the rivers thats only 2m wide at the coast but much too deep to wade (or swim). We camped at midnight, met the neighbourhood fox, after running into a local summer house family, who told us where best to wade the river inland, and slept like babies in our tiny Decathlon tent.

Day 2 brought us from Látrar to Fljótavík, over a highland pass covered in fog. The visibility was barely enough to get us from signpost to signpost, or between piles of rocks in a field of rocks, so even though it was also a 16km day, it took us all day to finally arrive in the right fjord. Once we were down from the pass, we ran into another summerhouse tenant, who told us where we should wade if we wanted to get to the Atlastadir campground, but we decided to go inland to the more private Glúmsstadir campground. The ground was damp but the view was gorgeous, and we had the place to ourselves.

Day 3 was slightly longer, more than 17km, from Fljótavík to Hlöðuvík, and the highland pass was wet foggy this time. We got damp thru our clothes and used the emergency shelter to dry our shoes and socks whiles we played games of cards and drank our rations of alcohol. We saw another fox, atleast 5 other hikers, and slept on the beach in a sanddune with two other tents pitched.

Day 4 was another 17km roughly, from Hlöðuvík to Hornvík, the main show, but the low clouds didn´t show us much of the seacliffs when we first arrived. Instead, we were greeted by a welcoming committee of baby foxes, still too young and playful to even notice us, and remained completely distracted by them and their antics.

We did, however, notice that the one and only ranger of the whole Hornstrandir reserve park system was not in, which was incredibly unfortunate, or unlucky rather, since we would only be spending a night there and her house was connected to the only flushing toilets we´d see all week, which were also locked. The door on the outhouse had broken, and with atleast 14 other people there, it got weird real fast. But we still had running water, and our cards, so we could cook, eat and play, and by the time we were ready for bed after a short hike around the fjord, the clouds miraculously parted and Hornvík mountain appeared before us, in all its glory.

Our last full day of hiking would be the highest climb, getting over the 519m pass between Hornvík and Veiðileysufjörður. It was approximately 16km, in scorching sunshine, and though there were patches of snow at the top, there wasn´t a breeze or a cloud in the sky, and we probably got even more burnt from the snow reflection. We were to meet the shuttle boat between 5 and 7 pm at the bottom of Veiðileysufjörður, which sailed us into Hesteyri and Grunavík before returning us to civilisation in Isafjorður. There we went straight to the house “Husid” and ordered something hot and freshly cooked – I think I got fish and chips – and green and healthy (vegetarian Gudny got some amazing greens and vegetables) and a pint of beer. Such basic food and alcohol has never tasted so good, but we filled our bellies and gorged the whole while thinking, “the weather is still so nice… shouldn’t we go back to Hornstrandir and stay there a bit longer?”