Explore Northwest Iceland
Having wound northeast around the convoluted coast for 60km from Hofsós, Route 76 cuts through an unpleasantly dark and narrow single-lane tunnel to land you at the enjoyably remote fishing port of SIGLUFJÖRÐUR, a highlight of any trip to the northwest. The country’s most northerly town, Siglufjörður clings precariously to the foot of steep mountain walls which enclose an isolated narrow fjord on the very edge of Iceland: the Arctic Circle is barely 40km away and you’re as far north here as Canada’s Baffin Island and central Alaska. Winters can be particularly severe, though in summer, Siglufjörður makes an excellent base from which to hike across the surrounding mountains.
Today, Siglufjörður’s heyday as a herring-fishing town is long gone and the place is considerably quieter, with a population of just thirteen hundred people. It’s a pleasant spot, consisting of a handful of parallel streets with unkempt multicoloured homes grouped around the main street, Túngata, which turns into Snorragata as it approaches the harbour, busy with the goings-on of a low-key fishing port. Here, you’ll see fishermen mending their nets in the shipyard and fish hanging out to dry – the town still produces kippers (smoked herring) from a factory down by the harbour. Once you’ve seen the herring museum there’s some excellent hiking to be had along the trails that lead up out of the fjord.
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Síldarminjasafn Íslands
Síldarminjasafn Íslands
Divided into three sections, Síldarminjasafn Íslands (the Herring Era Museum) expertly brings Siglufjörður’s past to life. The best idea is to start in the Bátahúsið and then work your way on to the old herring factory, Grána, before finishing in Róaldsbrakki, the building which was once home to the herring girls.
Bátahúsið
Home to a collection of ten ships, the Bátahúsið (boathouse) offers a fine introduction to some of the vessels that operated out of Siglufjörður during the herring era. The ships are dry-moored around a mockup of a quayside as it would have looked in the 1950s, and you can even clamber on board two of them; the largest boat in the museum is the Týr SK33, made of oak, which operated until 1988, when more modern steel vessels made its design obsolete.
Grána
Next door to the boathouse, you can peep inside Grána, the reconstructed herring factory. A whole host of machines help to give an idea of how Siglufjörður once produced vast amounts of fish meal and oil for the European market; the oil was used, for example, to light towns and cities across the continent as well as in the production of Brylcreem, Nivea face cream and Lux soap.
Róaldsbrakki
The herring girls’ story is brought to life in photographs and exhibits inside the Róaldsbrakki building, alongside Grána. This old salting station once housed around fifty herring girls – you can still see graffiti, daubed in nail varnish, on the walls of the second-floor room where they once slept, alongside faded black-and-white photographs of heart-throb Cary Grant. There’s usually a couple of atmospheric old films showing, too, which give an idea of the conditions of the time and the work that the herring girls carried out.
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Siglufjörður’s silver of the sea
Siglufjörður’s silver of the sea
From 1900 to 1970, Siglufjörður was the herring capital of the North Atlantic. Hundreds of fishing boats would crowd into the tiny fjord to unload their catches onto the rickety piers that once stretched out from the quayside, where herring girls, as they were known, would gut and salt them. During a good season, casual labour and the number of fishermen (who were, in the early part of the century at any rate, primarily Norwegian) could swell the town’s population threefold, to over ten thousand.
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Hiking around Siglufjörður
Hiking around Siglufjörður
Several excellent day hikes can easily be undertaken from Siglufjörður. The trails described below are shown on the hiking map of Siglufjörður available at the Síldarminjasafnið herring museum, and you can check out details in advance at wsiglo.is/en.
The best of the shorter routes (5–7hr), forming a clockwise circle around the town, begins at the southern edge of Siglufjörður, where the road veers left around the head of the fjord. Follow the walking path up Eyrafjall, heading towards the Dalaskarð pass, then over the mountain tops and up Hafnarfjall, from where there’s an excellent view over the fjord, the surrounding peaks and even Grímsey. From here it’s an easy climb up Hafnarhyrna (687m), the highest point on Hafnarfjall and the starting point for the easy descent towards the bowl-shaped hollow of Hvanneyrarskál, a well-known lovers’ haunt during the herring boom. From this hollow, a road leads back down into town.
A second, longer trail (10–14hr) begins beyond the disused airport on the eastern side of the fjord (follow the main road through the village to get there) and leads southeast up the valley of Kálfsdalur, which begins just above the lighthouse beyond the airport, past Kálfsvatn lake, over the Kálfsskarð pass (450m) before descending into Nesdalur valley on the other side of the ridge. The trail then leads north through the valley to the coast and the deserted farm, Reyðará. From the farm, the trail leads west along the steep slopes of Nesnúpur (595m) passing a lighthouse and several abandoned huts, built by the American military during World War II as a radar station. Once back on the eastern side of the fjord the path trail continues along the shoreline, towards the airport and Siglufjörður.
