Iceland
Víknaslóðir
The 'Deserted Inlets', where abandoned farmsteads crumble between rainbow mountains and the sea.
The farmstead is empty — walls crumbling, roof gone, meadow reclaiming the kitchen floor. Beyond it, rhyolite mountains streaked red, green and yellow fall into a coastline the last families left a century ago. Víknaslóðir is a trail network through ghost settlements, where human absence is the defining feature.
Víknaslóðir — the Deserted Inlets trails — is a multi-day network through abandoned coastal inlets of the Eastfjords, running between Borgarfjörður eystri and Seyðisfjörður. The inlets held farms for centuries until the families moved to larger villages in the early 1900s, leaving stone walls, collapsed turf roofs and sheep pens scattered beneath the coloured mountains. The standard traverses take three to five days across some of Iceland's most remote coastal terrain, with simple hiking huts and marked stages making the journey plannable — though hikers carry their food, and the weather rewrites plans without asking. Sea cliffs alternate with sheltered bays, and for days the only company is ruins, ridgelines and surf.
Solo
Walking alone through abandoned settlements and sleeping in huts on a deserted coast — for experienced hikers, this is Iceland's definitive solitary traverse.
Friends
A multi-day hike through ghost farms, rainbow mountains and coastal wilderness — carrying your own supplies, relying on each other, bonded by shared challenge and shared silence.
- Multi-day trails thread farms and inlets deserted in the early twentieth century.
- Rhyolite mountains streaked red, green and yellow stand over the ghost settlements.
- Simple hiking huts and marked stages link Borgarfjörður eystri to Seyðisfjörður.
- Ruins, ridgelines and surf keep you company for days on end.
Carry every breakfast, trail lunch and hut supper; Víknaslóðir is a self-catering route, not a chain of staffed restaurants.
The Loðmundarfjörður hut provides a gas stove and a charcoal grill without charcoal, so pack fuel, ingredients and contingencies accordingly.
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