15 Things You Need to Know Before Visiting the Faroe Islands
We traveled to the Faroe Islands as a family this summer and it was an absolute dream. Everywhere we went felt like we had just stepped into a fairytale.
The Faroes have such a unique, gorgeous, barren landscape that is absolutely COVERED in sheep and COUNTLESS (literally) waterfalls.
When we first landed, picked up our rental car, and started our first drive, it was comical how many times our jaws dropped.
I knew I was taking way too many photos out the car window that weren’t even going to turn out but I couldn’t stop!
We had an amazing time roadtripping throughout the Faroe Islands and I hope you do too.
This Faroe Islands travel guide will cover all of the top things I think you should know while you’re planning your trip to the Faroe Islands. If you’re unaware of some of these things, it could really put a damper on your trip (and nobody wants that).
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✈️OUR FAROE ISLANDS FAVORITES✈️
WHERE WE STAYED:
😍 Mulafossur Cottages:Absolutely stunning cottages in a remote valley surrounded by epic mountains and a nearby stream for playing. Only a 15-minute walk to Mulafossur Waterfall.
😍 Colorful Boathouse with Hot Tub:Picturesque boathouse situated right on the harbour in Leirvik with a cute wooden hot tub with boat and waterfall views with viking ruins right across the street!
EXCURSIONS WE BOOKED:
🛥️ Vestmanna Sea Cliff Boat Tour with Puffins!:Absolutely lovely boat tour along massive cliffs with hundreds, if not thousands, of birds nesting. We saw puffins flying!
🐑 1-Hour Tour of Faroese Wool Spinnery: Tour the ONLY spinnery on the island creating yarn from Faroese wool! An amazing family-run operation where we learned how wool is cleaned, carded and spun. You can even buy Faroese yarn when you're done! I highly recommend. (Click on their 'contact' page to message them to schedule a time)
OUR TRAVEL FAVORITES:
📸 Tours/Excursions: Viator & Get Your Guide
🚕 Airport Transfers with Car Seats: Welcome Pickups
👉 Travel Strollers: Zoe Traveler & Zoe Double
🍼 Baby Carriers: Tula Carriers, Wildride Hip Carriers
📱 International Data Phone eSIM: Airalo
🚗 Cheap Rental Cars: Economy Bookings
🏠 Accomodations: Booking, Expedia, VRBO, Airbnb
🌎 Travel Insurance: World Nomads
We receive a fee when you get a quote from World Nomads using the above link. We do not represent World Nomads. This is not a recommendation to buy travel insurance.
15 Tips for Visiting the Faroe Islands (Top Things to Know Before You Go)
1. The Faroe Islands are a self-governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark
The Faroe Islands are not their own country, but rather a self-governing territory of the Kingdom of Denmark (aka Denmark).
This means that the Faroe Islands have their own government and parliament; however, they also have two seats on the Danish Parliament.
The Faroe Islands share the same currency as Denmark (Danish Kroner/DKK), and although the national language is Faroese, most locals also speak Danish and English proficiently.
If you’ve visited Denmark before your trip to the Faroe Islands, you’ll recognize most of the brands sold at the grocery store, although the store names themselves are different.
Speaking of Denmark, since the Faroe Islands are a territory of Denmark, it’s very easy to find daily, direct flights from all over Denmark to the Faroes (Copenhagen, Billund, and Aalborg).
This makes the Faroe Islands a super easy add-on to a greater Denmark and/or Scandinavia trip.
I know we are talking a lot about Denmark; however, the landscape and vibe of the Faroes is a far cry from that of Denmark, even though it’s just a short 1.5-hour flight away.
The Faroes have a rugged, remote beauty that is so unique. Visiting Denmark and the Faroe Islands are two very different experiences and I do recommend both.
We’ve lived in Denmark for the last 6+ years, so if you’re thinking of adding some time in Denmark onto your Faroe Islands trip, be sure to check out my Denmark content here.
2. The Faroe Islands Are Located Between Iceland and Scotland
You may think that since the Faroe Islands are a territory of Denmark, they’d be nearby. However, they are actually about a 1.5-hour flight away, located in the waters just southeast of Iceland and northwest of Scotland.
Now, we haven’t visited Iceland yet; however, we have visited the Scottish Highlands, and I think it’s fair to say that the Faroe Islands are a bit of the two.
The Faroes don’t have volcanoes or hot springs like Iceland, or have castles like Scotland, but they have their own unique rugged beauty with endless waterfalls, tens of thousands of sheep, grass-covered homes, and gorgeous rocks and coastlines.
And the best part is that although it’s becoming more popular amongst tourists in recent years, it still feels quite undiscovered.
3. There are some absolutely stunning places to stay in the Faroe Islands
When I think of our trip to the Faroe Islands, I immediately think of Mulafossur Cottages.
Mulafossur Cottages are a small grouping of absolutely STUNNING, traditional cottages with grass-covered roofs located in a quiet valley surrounded by epic mountains just a 10-minute walk from Mulafossur waterfall.
There is a bubbling stream with a small bridge nearby that our kids loved playing in and you may be lucky enough to spot Highland Cows, sheep, and interesting birds.
THEY ARE AMAZING, and I think you should do everything within your power to stay at Mulafossur Cottages. When we booked our JULY stay in DECEMBER and dates were already filling up (it was crazy).
I even told my husband that if I couldn’t find dates that worked, we were going to wait until the next year to visit the Faroes because I wanted to stay here that much.
And I’m happy to say we booked it and weren’t disappointed! Staying at Mulafossur Cottages was the highlight of our trip!
Check out availability and prices for Mulafossur Cottages here.
We split our week into two parts and stayed on the opposite side of the Faroes in this colorful boathouse right on the harbor with (get this) an amazing hot tub.
The boathouse was immaculate, had everything we needed, super comfortable beds and even toys tucked away for the kids!
But, obviously, the highlight was the super cozy, wooden hot tub out on the patio with views of the sailboats and waterfalls streaming down the hillsides.
We all looked forward to hopping into it every night. It was amazing to hang out together and chat in the warm water (with great views of course) after a day of exploring.
There are even Viking ruins across the street🫢!
Splitting our time between these two places was perfect for us, but there are (of course) even more stunning places to stay in the Faroe Islands.
If you’re looking for a more central location, Torshavn is a good idea. However, we preferred the remote and/or unique experiences of staying in other areas.
For more lodging ideas in the Faroe Islands, check out this post: 4 Stunning Places To Stay in The Faroe Islands: We’ve Stayed at Two of Them!
4. Renting a Car is The Easiest Way To Explore the Faroe Islands
Car Rental
Sights in the Faroes can be quite spread out and remote, and it’s much nicer and easier to have the ability to go where you want, when you want.
One thing that I was NOT expecting was how expensive our rental car would be. It was the last thing I booked for our trip and I had a bit of sticker shock.
Our 1-week car rental for a Ford Focus station wagon cost us about $1450 😮 ( I know, it was bonkers). For comparison, our 1-week car rental in Ibiza, Spain only cost us about $265 (big difference).
Because car rental prices are crazy high in the Faroes, I highly recommend booking through Economybookings.com.
I almost exclusively book our rental cars through Economy Bookings (and we book rental cars a lot).
When I was booking our car for the Faroes, I searched on multiple booking platforms and even directly with car rental companies, and I STILL found the best price through Economy Bookings.
I was grateful to save any money I could, considering how expensive those cars were 😭.
If you’ve never heard of Economy Bookings, click here to check it out. We use it all of the time.
Keep in mind, there are a LOT of tunnels you have to drive through in the Faroes. Both tunnels through mountains and tunnels under the sea (crazy, right?).
I think we drove through 2-4 (long) tunnels each day of our trip.
If you don’t love driving through tunnels, I’d recommend checking out many of the amazing tour options available in the Faroes- click here to search tours or keep reading.
Public Transit
While it’s technically possible to explore some of the Faroe Islands via public transit, it will be tricky. Public transit will limit your destinations, and you’ll have to adhere to the limited public transit schedule.
However, if that’s interesting to you, you can learn more about public transportation in the Faroes here.
Day Tours and Multi-Day Tours
If you don’t want to drive, rather than public transit, I’d recommend booking multiple different day-tours from Torshavn or one big multi-day tour of the Faroes.
There are awesome hiking tours, boat tours, and guided trips out to the puffin island (Mykines), plus way more tours to choose from.
You can search tours by departure location (many of them leave out of Torshavn, which makes it super easy) or you can search by type of tour.
See what tour options are available in the Faroe Islands by clicking here.
ALL tours in the Faroe Islands are listed on this website and are extremely difficult to find anywhere else… which brings me to my next point.
5. Almost All Tours and Excursions Have to be booked exclusively through Guidetofaroeislands.fo
When I was trying to search for different boat trips and other guided tours or experiences in the Faroes, I couldn’t find much on the usual search engines I use (Viator and Get Your Guide).
That’s when I realized that the Faroe Islands has created its own booking platform, which is called guidetofaroeislands.com.
One of their representatives told me that they have taken down/will take down all tours and activities from global platforms in a joint, local initiative to strengthen their local providers.
That’s something I like about the Faroes- they are big on supporting local businesses.
So, that being said, if you want to find any hiking tours (some hikes REQUIRE tour guides), boat tours (like to see puffins), multi-day tours, you name it… then you need to visit guidetofaroeislands.com.
We booked this Vestmanna Sea Cliffs Boat Trip and I highly recommend it! The boat trip passes mountainsides, waterfalls, and even goes through narrow channels between sea stacks.
We saw hundreds, if not thousands, of birds on this boat trip– including puffins nesting!
We also booked a 1-hour tour of ‘Spinnaríið við Anna’, the only micro-spinnery spinning Faroese wool!
It was so great. It’s a small, family-run operation, and it was so meaningful to see, after seeing thousands of sheep ALL over the island and learning about the rich history of Faroese wool exports that has been forgotten in recent years.
As of now, these tours can only be booked through the Spinnery’s contact page.
6. There are So Many Tunnels (including underwater ones!), and some have an expensive toll
As I mentioned in an earlier section, there are (thankfully) SO MANY tunnels you have to drive through in the Faroe Islands.
There are tunnels through mountain sides, along the water’s edge, and even UNDER water (I know, crazy).
One of the ‘subsea tunnels’ aka underwater tunnels, even has a roundabout! It was the world’s first underwater roundabout!
If it weren’t for these tunnels in the Faroes, it would be SO MUCH more difficult to get around.
Before the tunnels, they relied on only a couple of bridges and ferry transport.
And back in the day, the postman had to hike over one of the mountains from one village to another to deliver mail (thankfully, now there is a tunnel through that mountain but only since 2003/2006.
You can even hike The Postman Trail, which we totally would have done if we weren’t with our young kids (it was too strenuous for them).
The most important thing to know is that the 4 subsea tunnels do have a toll, and it can get expensive quickly if you continually have to use them.
They range from $7.50 to $27 for a one-way toll. The most expensive subsea tunnel is the Eysturoyartunnil (The Eysturoy Tunnel) at $27 one-way or about $55 round-trip.
You can’t do much about the cost of these tunnels; however, you may want to check where your accommodations are in relation to them, because if you have to pay for a round-trip toll on the Eysturoy Tunnel each day, the cost could quickly add up.
Paying the tolls is automatic through your rental car company. A photo of your license plate is taken as you enter and exit each tunnel, and the information is sent to them.
Our rental car company just kept track of all the tolls we owed and billed us at the end of our trip. Easy peasy.
For more information about subsea tunnels, you can click here.
7. The Best Months to Visit The Faroe Islands are May to September.
Torshavn, the capital city of the Faroe Islands, is considered to be the cloudiest city in the world (yes, the world) with only about 840 hours of sunshine each year. That’s only about 70 days per year worth of sunshine.
So, that may help you realize that the weather in the Faroe Islands is very consistently cloudy and rainy.
We visited at the end of July and had the perfect mix of cloudy, moody days with a short amount of time of sun peaking through the clouds.
Clouds and fog roll in and out, and wind comes and goes all day long.
That being said, our hosts at Mulafossur Cottages suggested that the best months to visit are May to September.
Before and after those months, the weather is even more volatile, and you may have to spend more days inside your accommodations than you wish.
But, if you do have to be stuck inside, you want to be stuck inside Mulafossure Cottages.
We had one day spent mostly at home because of too much rain and fog, but we were still able to enjoy the gorgeous views surrounding our cottage while inside.
8. Pack warm layers, no matter the season you’re visiting
Like I mentioned above, the weather is often rainy, cloudy, foggy, and windy in the Faroe Islands.
When we visited in June, we wore long pants with a warm sweater and a rain jacket/windbreaker, topped off with a beanie and hiking boots each day.
I was surprised at how often we all wore beanies, but it was every day.
Our kids were outfitted in long pants and sweaters with rain boots, topped with very typical Scandinavian rain suits.
These rain suits are an everyday sight in both the Faroe Islands and where we live in Denmark and they’re AMAZING for rainy weather.
If you’re visiting the Faroe Islands with kids, I highly recommend purchasing some of these rain suits and boots before your trip. Our kids wore them at some point every day and got SO muddy in them on a couple of occasions.
We like the Danish brand Celavi because their rain clothes are both super cute and work super well.
Click here to check out the Danish rain suits for kids that we love and recommend.
If you live in the US, you’re lucky enough that you can get Celavi rain suits on Amazon here.
9. Restaurants can be Few and Far Between in the Faroe Islands
If eating out is important to you, I recommend staying in or near Torshavn because restaurants are few and far between in other parts of the islands.
If you are staying outside of Torshavn (which we did and loved) then plan on making a few grocery trips to prepare your own meals.
We prepared almost all of our own food; however, we did eat out at two gems of restaurants: Fiskastykkid and Caféin á Mølini, where we tried fish soup and chicken soup, respectively (both were delicious).
10. There are Lots of hiking Trails in the Faroe Islands- Some have an Entrance Fee
If you love hiking, the Faroe Islands have some really great trails.
We hiked the Klakkur trail, which is about 1.7 miles round-trip and has really stunning panoramic views.
It’s uphill most of the way, but then it’s an easy downhill on the way back. Our 3-year-old hiked it, so you can too!
Some other super popular (and epic) hikes are the Kallur Lighthouse and Drangarnir Sea Arch.
Drangarnir Sea Arch requires a guide, and some other hikes such as hiking on Mykines (puffin island) may require a guide if you want to hike in certain, restricted areas. You can learn more about Mykines Island here.
Most hikes don’t require a guide, but some do require an entrance fee that can usually just be paid at the trailhead. And even then, not all hikes require an entrance fee.
You can learn more about possible hiking fees here.
Saksun Lagoon Walk used to require an entrance fee, but as of 2025 no longer does. You’ll probably still see a lot of information on blogs saying that there is a fee required for this walk.
Alternatively, if you don’t want the headache of figuring out access and/or fees, you could book a guided hiking tour on some of the most popular hiking trails in the Faroes.
11. There are More Sheep Than People in the Faroe Islands (they are everywhere!)
It’s amazing how many sheep there are in the Faroe Islands- literally SO MANY.
In Faroese, the Faroe Islands are called ‘Føroyar’, which is thought to have derived from Old Norse and means “Sheep Islands” (very fitting).
There are actually more sheep than people (around 70,000 sheep to 50,000 people).
The sheep in the Faroe Islands are unique because their wool comes in such a variety of colors and patterns-they are beautiful!
The sheep roam freely across the islands and are often directly on the roadside or even crossing the road. You’ll just want to be sure to stay attentive and watch out for any sheep crossing the road.
Most of the sheep are raised as food; however, there is one small, family-run microspinnery that is the only place on the island that spins Faroese wool into yarn.
We took a 1-hour tour, and it was one of the highlights of our trip. You have to reach out to them for a tour through their contact page.
You can even book a Shepherdess Tour, where you get to experience feeding 11 flocks of sheep over 3 hours across the island while even crossing rivers in a 4×4 vehicle. Our kids would have loved this, but we just didn’t have time for it.
12. The Faroes are a great place to travel with kids
We absolutely loved visiting the Faroe Islands with our kids (ages 11 months, 3.5 years, and 6.5 years).
We did easy hikes, stunning viewpoints, played in streams, learned about sheep, played at playgrounds (almost every little village has a pretty great playground), and more!
My family guide to the Faroe Islands is coming soon!
I mentioned this above, but in case you missed it, I highly recommend purchasing some of these rain suits for your kids before your trip. Kids all across Scandinavia wear these on the regular.
They are a super cute, high-quality Danish brand (where we live), but you can get them on Amazon in the US- click here to see them!
13. You Don’t Have to Go Searching for Grass-Covered Buildings
Before we visited the Faroe Islands, I thought we were really going to have to luck out to see the amazingly picturesque grass-covered houses.
I thought they were only going to on the very old, historical buildings and that we’d have to go searching.
But let me bring peace to you’re mind- they are EVERYWHERE. It’s amazing. Old buildings have grass, new buildings have grass, and all sorts of buildings in between.
We even saw someone ‘mowing’ their roof! It was so great.
14. The Faroe Islands are a knitter’s Paradise
If you love knitting or crocheting or anything that has to do with yarn, you will LOVE the Faroe Islands. They truly are a knitter’s paradise.
Sheep are everywhere, and homemade wool sweaters are everywhere. You can find multiple shops to purchase your own yarn, and so many local shops selling handmade yarn goods.
You can even book a cozy, 3-hour knitting experience with a local in their home! How amazing would that be?
Novice knitters knit a scarf with guidance, and more experienced knitters knit a hat. (Knitting needles, yarn, and pattern are included in the price!).
Plus, you get to learn about Faroese history while you learn. Sounds so cozy.
15. Multiple Spots across the islands are ‘closed for maintenance’ for one weekend each April
Each year, the Faroe Islands spend one weekend in April closing multiple sites across the islands for maintenance, and they call it: ‘Closed for Maintenance, Open for Voluntourism‘.
Volunteers can apply to be selected to go and help with maintenance while having some of their travel costs covered.
It would be a shame to book a trip the weekend this event falls on and not be able to access some of the top sights you’re hoping to see.
You can learn more about it here and even offer to be a volunteer.
🐑 LOOKING FOR MORE IDEAS FOR VISITING THE FAROE ISLANDS?
CHECK OUT MY OTHER FAROE ISLAND GUIDES:
🛏️ 4 Stunning Places To Stay in The Faroe Islands: We’ve Stayed at Two of Them!
🐑 The ONLY Guide You Need to Visit The Faroe Islands with Kids
⛰️ 5-Day Faroe Islands Itinerary with Hidden Gems
⛅ Is July The Best Time to Visit The Faroe Islands?
💰 Faroe Islands Trip Cost Breakdown: Is it as Expensive as They Say?
1️⃣ Sandoy Faroe Islands: 1 Day Itinerary
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