Hiking Fossa

Time: 20 minutes each way / 40 minutes round trip to Mid Tier/ 1 hour round trip to Upper Tier

Difficulty:  Easy

Distance: .5 miles each way / 1 mile round trip

The hike to Fossa will be my shortest and most straightforward blog plost.  Of all attractions in the Faroe Islands, Foss is one of the easiest to get to and most accessible.  As long as you have a car and a set of eyeballs, you can get there.  It is about 35 minutes outside of Torshavn and has a pull off for you to park your car.

First you may ask, what is a Fossa?  Fossa is the Faroese word for waterfall and this just happens to be the tallest Fossa in the land.  Coming from a mountain top lake, the waterfall cascades over two separate tiers of land eventually reaching the ocean after 140 meters of vertical drop.  Depending on the time of year that you visit, you’ll be able to catch more or less flow coming off the mountain.  During times of low flow it is still impressive, but if you can catch it with a lot of runoff, maybe after a rain or in the spring, the waterfall will be roaring!

To get there, plug into google maps “Haldarsvik”.  It is a town that is right past Fossa so you won’t miss it.  You can actually plug in “Fossa” and that should work as well.   Fossa is located here in relation:

For another reference, you will approach the Faroe Islands only over the ocean bridge coming from Torshavn…don’t go over it.  Simply turn off to the left and you’ll go down a road that isn’t advertised as one lane, but much like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory it gets weirder and smaller as you go until eventually, it is one lane.  The protocol here is this:  if you see an approaching car, whoever has the built in turnoff on their side should turn off and let the other pass.   You may panic but don’t it happens all the time and people are used to it. 

Once you get to Fossa, there is a sign that will tell you where the designated hikes are, but I’ll make it easy on you: just go walk around and don’t die.  Here are a few videos I took with a Mavic Air from both the lower tier in the winter and upper tier in the summer.  You can go behind the waterfall in the middle tier as well for a little extra adventure, but expect to get wet.

A view on the second tier, forward is behind the waterfall

If you REALLY want, you can even go to the highest tier overlooking both cascades, but I would honestly recommend just going to the middle.  To get there, just walk past the sign, turn right and traverse the mountain on a bit of a parallel path walking away from the actual waterfall.  After about ten minutes, you’ll come to a part of the mountain that has fallen in and you can then move vertically up.  Move until you can determine you’ve moved up a tier and then start trekking on a parallel path back towards the waterfall, illustrated below:

To get to the highest tier, just keep going up the path instead of turning left back towards the waterfall and then when you reach the top top then turn left.  I’ll illustrate this in pictures as well.

Fossa is a great experience and great, easy hike to do but as always in the Faroe Islands, just watch the heights.  If you have small children keep them away from the edges and watch your footing!

A really interesting aspect of this all is from Slaettaratindur where you can see Fossa, but it looks like a small puddle slowly dripping off the mountain from any elevation.  It gives you an impressive appreciation for the magnitude of the Faroe Islands.

As always, if you have any questions or comments please leave them below!  You can also follow @keithrhollis or @faroeislandstourist for more pictures!  Thanks for reading!