Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Greenland: Which One Is Right for You? 

They sit in a rough line across the North Atlantic, three islands that outsiders often blur into one idea of the far north: Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and Greenland. They are not interchangeable. One is a polished, easy-to-drive land of waterfalls and hot springs that more than two million people now visit a year; one is a green, foggy, half-empty huddle of villages; and one is a vast Arctic wilderness of ice with no roads between its towns. Which is right for you depends less on which is ‘best’ and more on what you want from a trip. Here is how to tell them apart, and how to choose. 

How They Compare 

Start with how hard each is to reach and to travel. Iceland is the easy one: direct flights land from across Europe and North America, and once there you can drive the whole country on good, paved roads. The Faroe Islands take a short flight or a car ferry, and once you arrive a network of tunnels, some of them under the sea, makes the compact archipelago simple to get around. Greenland is the outlier. You fly in, increasingly to the new airport at Nuuk, but there are no roads between towns, so every onward leg is a small plane, a boat, a helicopter, or a dog sled, at the mercy of the weather. 

The gap in crowds is enormous, and it is the clearest reason to prefer one over another. Iceland now takes more than two million visitors a year. The Faroes and Greenland each see only a small fraction of Iceland’s visitors, and the difference is felt everywhere, in the line at a famous waterfall, or the absence of one. Cost and effort follow the same order: Iceland is the most affordable and the easiest to plan, Greenland the most expensive and the most demanding, and the Faroes sit comfortably in between. 

Then there is the character of each place. Iceland is the greatest-hits reel of volcanoes, glaciers, geysers, black beaches, and hot springs, backed by saga heritage and the small, lively capital of Reykjavík. The Faroes trade spectacle for atmosphere: green sea cliffs, grass-roofed villages, fog and wind, and a culture of home cooking, heimablídni, and music. Greenland is defined by sheer size: the ice sheet, the calving glaciers of Ilulissat, the immense fjords, and a living Inuit culture met over coffee at a kaffemik. All three show the northern lights in the dark months and long light in summer, but Iceland is the most flexible across the year, the Faroes are at their best in summer, and Greenland splits sharply between a summer of boats and a winter of dog sleds. 

Choose Iceland If… 

Iceland is the natural choice for a first trip to this part of the world, and for good reason: it packs an improbable variety of landscapes, waterfalls, glaciers, volcanoes, geysers, and black-sand beaches, into a country you can largely see from a rental car on good roads. It has the most flights, the most accommodation, the most tours, and the most dependable infrastructure of the three, which makes it the easiest to plan and the most forgiving when the weather turns. The trade-off is people: the famous sights get busy, and part of the art of a good Iceland trip is knowing when and where to step away from the crowds, which our guide to the best time to visit Iceland covers season by season. For a first loop of the island, our 9-day Ring Road self-drive is a starting point we shape around you, from the Golden Circle and the South Coast to Jökulsárlón, Mývatn, and Snæfellsnes. 

Choose the Faroe Islands If… 

The Faroe Islands suit the traveler who looks at Iceland and wishes it were quieter. They offer much of the same raw North Atlantic beauty, sea cliffs, waterfalls, and puffins, but with a small fraction of Iceland’s visitors, and a distinct culture of grass-roofed villages and home hospitality. They are compact, safe, and easy to drive, stitched together by tunnels beneath the sea. The catch is the weather, which is wetter and windier than Iceland’s and tends to run the show, and the fact that there are fewer big-name sights to tick off. If you value villages, hiking, and having a viewpoint to yourself over a checklist of wonders, this is your island, and our reasons to visit the Faroe Islands go into the detail. Our 8-day Faroe Islands island-hopping self-drive is a starting point we adapt to you, taking in Saksun, Gjógv, and the northern islands from a base in Klaksvík. 

Choose Greenland If… 

Greenland is for travelers who want the Arctic at its most vast and least tamed, and who are willing to work for it. Little here is on the scale of anywhere else: the ice sheet, the fast-moving glaciers of the Ilulissat Icefjord, the enormous fjords of the east, and the living Inuit culture of the settlements. It is also the hardest and most expensive of the three to travel, with no roads between towns, a short season, and weather that can rearrange any plan. This is not a place for a quick look; it rewards time, flexibility, and a taste for adventure. If that is what you are after, nowhere else on this list comes close, and our reasons to visit Greenland explain why. 

What Each One Is Best For 

It helps to sort them by what you want from the trip. All three show the northern lights from roughly September to April, but the trade-off is clear: Iceland is the easiest and cheapest to reach for a lights-focused trip, while Greenland and the Faroes hand you darker skies and far fewer people under them. Seabirds tilt the other way, toward Iceland’s big, accessible puffin colonies and the Faroes’ Mykines, a classic of its kind; Greenland you visit for ice, not birds. And ice is where the comparison stops being a comparison. Greenland is on another scale entirely. Iceland still holds up well, with sizable glaciers and the iceberg lagoon at Jökulsárlón, while the Faroes have none at all. 

The rest comes down to how much the trip should ask of you. Villages and a living culture, met over a shared meal, belong to the Faroes and Greenland. Hiking splits three ways: the Faroes for the great dramatic day walks, Greenland for serious multi-day wilderness, Iceland for range and easy access. For a first trip north, it is Iceland every time. And if what you want is the feeling of being far from everything, Greenland comes first, the Faroes second, and Iceland only once the main roads are behind you. 

Can You Visit More Than One? 

Yes, and Iceland is the hub that makes it possible. Short flights connect Keflavík to Nuuk and Ilulissat in Greenland and to the Faroe Islands, and from spring to late autumn the Smyril Line ferry links Iceland with the Faroes and Denmark. Pairing Iceland with the Faroes is easy; they are close, and both are compact, which makes them a natural summer pairing for a coolcation. Adding Greenland is more of a commitment, because it is a bigger, slower destination that deserves its own stretch of time rather than a two-day detour. Our advice is to combine only where it adds up to more than the sum of its parts, and otherwise to give a single country the trip it deserves. This is the kind of routing we plan across all three countries, so if you are weighing it up, ask us; here is how we plan a tailor-made trip. 

So, Which Should You Choose?

If you take one thing from all this, let it be that these are three different trips, not three versions of the same one. Iceland is the accessible, spectacular introduction; the Faroe Islands are the quiet, green road less traveled; Greenland is the vast, demanding, once-in-a-lifetime Arctic. Tell us what that is, and we will point you to the right island or help you string together more than one.

The Questions We Get When People Are Choosing