Curated itineraries bring travelers to lesser-known points on the Faroe Islands.
Courtesy of Visit Faroe Islands
I’d been on the ground less than 20 minutes before the trepidation set in. Twenty minutes earlier, I’d walked off a propeller plane that had, an hour and a half earlier, left Reykjavík. Ten hours before that, I kissed my dog goodnight and got into my bed in New York City. Now I was finally here, in the Faroe Islands, with nothing planned at all except for that very nothing: to let a car dictate where I would go on vacation.
A month earlier, when I’d gotten a note about the Faroe Islands’ new self-navigating car adventures, I pictured Thelma and Louise holding hands and driving off a cliff, the car in control of my destiny. Then I read more closely: The car doesn’t drive itself; the driver still does that. After a traveler scans a QR code to “unlock” an itinerary, the car provides the steps, using navigation technology to give turn-by-turn directions. It promises exclusivity (no two cars arriving at the same time) and personality (all are places that Faroe Islands locals suggested). It sounded simple enough in theory. But how would it actually work in practice? Gamely, I decided to find out.
A month later, at the 62N rental car desk at Vágar Airport in the Faroe Islands, all seemed standard so far: registration number, credit card, driver’s license. Then—“Oh!” The agent brightened, having noticed something in my file. She reached into a folder and placed a sheet of paper on the desk between us, sliding it toward me with a smile.
Titled “Self-Navigating Car Rental Agreement,” the paper asked me to agree to “embrace the mystery” and obey the car: “If the car wants you to go left, you go left: Even if you think right looks sunnier or there is a famous waterfall,” it read. It also warned that should I break the spell and switch off a GPS midroute, I would be fined “aura points.” There were caveats, which included the detail that the car would, in fact, be tracked—so other users with self-navigating cars would be sent to other locations—but mostly, the form served as good-natured encouragement; a reminder of the mission at hand. Refrain from rebelling against the GPS overlord! Enjoy the adventure! I signed it quickly and passed it back across the desk.
“Parking lot three, white car,” the agent said. Then she paused. “Well, sort of white. You’ll see.”
In parking lot three, it took me less than a minute to identify which car was mine. White, sort of, with arrows and lines covering its exterior, as if a giant Google map had been printed and pasted over the body. Inconspicuous traveler, I would not be. Enjoy the adventure, I told myself, and climbed in.
Spirited as they are, the Faroe Islands self-navigating car adventures were born out of a real need for responsible tourism management. Data from McKinsey & Company show that 80 percent of people visit just 10 percent of global attractions. On the ground in the Faroe Islands, increasing pressure on popular sites—like Mulafossur waterfall, and Sørvágsvatn, the largest lake in the Faroe Islands—meant that the tourism board wanted to figure out new ways of moving travelers around the archipelago. (Spreading visitors more evenly, and balanced tourism, are two of the eight areas of focus for the islands’ tourism 2030 goals.)
Marta Káradóttir, Content & Communications manager at Visit Faroe Islands and project manager behind the initiative, told me that her team initially couldn’t visualize how self-navigating cars aligned with sustainability. It couldn’t just be, Go see other places! But once they tapped into the concept of decision-free holidays, wherein the traveler gives over some element of control to surprise, the idea was unlocked. “We were appealing to the curiosity of the traveler and perhaps to the nostalgia for the way we used to travel, which is not driven by social media or algorithms,” Káradóttir says. “It took us a while to get there [to the idea], but I’m glad we did.” And after a year of development, the program launched in July 2025 with 30 self-guided itineraries, each with around four stops curated by locals. It is the first program of its kind.
Visit Faroe Islands worked with car rental agency 62N to design three vehicles to launch the initiative.
Courtesy of Visit Faroe Islands
It was not the first time the tourism board has turned to quirkiness: In spring 2016, the islands partnered with local airline Atlantic Airways to debut “Sheep View 360”—strapping cameras on the backs of sheep to simultaneously capture the beauty of the islands and raise awareness of the fact that Google Street View—a boon for wayfinding—was not yet available on the islands. (By August of that same year, it was introduced.)
Three years later, in spring 2019, Visit Faroe Islands launched Closed for Maintenance, Open for Voluntourism, a program that shuts down some of the most popular sites for a few days. In exchange for free room and board, several dozen international volunteers are invited to participate in various infrastructure projects across the islands, including constructing pathways to preserve the islands’ natural beauty as well as installing wayfinding signs on trails and roads to keep both visitors and locals safe. (A former Afar editor experienced it firsthand in 2024.) But in addition to garnering headlines, the quirkiness paid off: With more than 40,000 applicants over the past six years, the program has an acceptance rate of approximately 1.7 percent, making it more competitive than Harvard admission. Together, nearly 700 volunteers from 54 countries and more than 200 Faroese citizens have participated in 62 projects across 11 of the 18 islands. And the idea has also spread to other continents: In 2024, a lodge in Chilean Patagonia took a similar approach to help develop a new, sustainable trail in Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park.
The next morning, I was ready to begin my adventure. I ate a quick breakfast of coffee, juice, and waffles at my hotel—the turf-topped Hotel Føroyar—and walked to my car, unmissable in a sea of standard-colored vehicles. I pulled out my phone and scanned the QR sticker on the glove compartment, and up popped my destination: I’d be driving seven miles south to a place called Kirkjubøur; no other details offered. I set off, sheep flanking the edges of the road, the morning fog limiting my vision. With water on my right, I turned onto a single-track road, crawling at first, and then deciding to barrel ahead. Ahead of me, Kirkjubøur came into view: a small white church, a clutch of black houses, stone ruins with no roof. I parked in an empty lot facing the sea and read the description that popped up on my phone: Kirkjubøur features the ruins of the 12th-century Magnus Cathedral and the 13th-century St. Olav’s Church, the oldest continually used church in the Faroe Islands.
I walked toward the stone ruins, the only other people nearby a couple speaking Spanish and their small child, scampering around the black homes. Inside the complex, the oldest medieval ruins in the Faroe Islands, I was alone, the solitude allowing me time—and space—to focus on what was around me. Gothic arches opened to the lapping sea just beyond and to the curve of a hiking path on green hills.
Diagonal to the ruins lay St. Olav’s Church, so named for the Norwegian King Olav den Hellige (995–1035). Dating to around 1250, the small church was built of boulders and has since been covered with whitewash. Blond wooden pews faced the altar, which had a painting by Sámal Mikines, one of the most renowned artists from the Faroe Islands. It depicted a dark fishing boat and an illuminated figure and I spent a while assessing the painting from 10 feet, then 5. Outside the church, a white fishing boat rested on the rocks, as if taking a respite from the waters.
Back in the car, the GPS informed me that my next stop was a manageable mile down the road in Hósvík. Along the curl of the bay, a row of painted boathouses sat at the shore. I learned that they’d been recently renovated to serve as accommodations. As I walked out onto the wooden platform into the bay, I realized how alone I was. I noticed a ladder that descended into the waters of the bay and contemplated a swim, but—realizing I’d forgotten a towel—decided against it.
Instead, I pulled out my phone and scanned the QR code, ready for my next set of instructions. It felt secretive, as if I was receiving a message from a command center. I pulled away from the parking lot and drove 10 minutes down the road to the town of Hvalvík. Wind rustled through the tall grasses, and black turf-topped homes were clustered around the main road. I was there for the church, which dates to 1829. I parked near the structure and walked near it, reading about its history: The church is built with wood bought from a ship that ran aground in Saksun in 1828. The architecture is typically Faroese, with no stone foundations. The pulpit dates back to 1609 and was originally in the church in Tórshavn. The bishop of the church was the first to import knives and forks to the Faroe Islands.
As with the stop before it, and the stop before that, there was no one around but Faroese locals, working in their gardens and riding a bike. It was an experience that continued to repeat itself whenever I pulled out my phone and scanned that QR code. My last afternoon, as I stood on a black-sand beach, water pooling at my feet, I considered what a rarity it was to be so alone in a place of such beauty. And in such a busy world, too, what a gift.
Although it has only been deployed for several months, the self-navigating program is already providing useful information on the power of surprise. Travelers who rented the cars identified themselves as courageous, spontaneous, and adventurous, and they started using the QR feature right away—as soon as they left the airport. But Káradóttir told me data also showed that people who rented these self-navigating cars were driving half the mileage of those in “regular” cars, even though both were renting the cars for an average of six days. Káradóttir suggested that travelers using the feature felt that they were satisfied and had seen what they’d wanted to see, even without planning any part of it. And this was more sustainable in a different way.
Káradóttir told me her team will keep assessing the data to see what effect the itineraries have had in a year; they plan to add more itineraries and work more closely with municipalities. It could also grow to include other forms of transport—perhaps a bike or a bus. Already, she said, there have been calls from tourism boards in other countries, interested in adapting the idea of self-navigating cars to their locations; interested in this concept of helping curate this idea of surprise and delight.
“We’ve been traveling the same way for many, many years, and it’s all looking the same,” Káradóttir said. “We rent a car and we have a bucket list, and then we drive. That’s it. But we’re adding elements to the system that can change the way we travel.”
Travelers can book a rental car through 62N, which offers a four-night self-drive package from 920 euros ($1,000) and has integrated self-navigation technology. Itineraries for the Faroe Islands are also available at selfnavigatingcars.com.
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