Víknaslóðir

The farmstead is empty — walls crumbling, roof gone, meadow reclaiming the kitchen floor. Beyond it, rainbow-coloured mountains fall into a coastline that was abandoned when the last families left in the early 20th century. Víknaslóðir in Iceland's Eastfjords is a trail system through ghost settlements — a place where human absence is the defining feature.

Víknaslóðir — the Deserted Inlets Trail — is a multi-day hiking route through a series of abandoned coastal inlets in the Eastfjords, connecting Borgarfjörður eystri to Seyðisfjörður. The inlets were settled for centuries but depopulated in the early 1900s as families moved to larger villages. Their ruins — stone walls, collapsed turf roofs, sheep pens — remain scattered among rhyolite mountains streaked in red, green, and yellow. National Geographic has ranked the trail among the world's top 20 hikes. The standard route takes 3-5 days, passing through some of Iceland's most remote coastal terrain with camping at designated spots. The rhyolite geology produces the vivid mountain colours, while the coastline alternates between sea cliffs and sheltered bays. No services exist on the trail — hikers carry all supplies and must be prepared for rapidly changing weather.