Siglufjörður

Silence registers before anything else. Then the colour — canary yellow, postbox red, ocean blue — painted onto timber houses lining a harbour ringed by mountains so steep they block the afternoon sun. Siglufjörður once held the world's herring wealth; now it holds its breath in the most photogenic quiet in north Iceland.

Siglufjörður was Iceland's herring capital through the boom decades of the early-to-mid 20th century, when thousands of seasonal workers descended on this tiny fjord to salt, barrel and ship the silver darlings. The stocks crashed in the late 1960s and the town nearly died with them. Today the award-winning Herring Era Museum, spread across three harbourside buildings, resurrects that vanished world with recreated salting stations and first-person accounts, and the Héðinsfjörður tunnels — opened in 2010 — ended the winter isolation that once lasted months. A folk-music festival, a craft brewery and harbourside kitchens add the new layers on top of the old herring money.