Hagavöllur

Few golf experiences in the world match the sheer improbability of Hagavöllur. Seyðisfjörður is a small fjord town in Iceland's East, accessible via a dramatic mountain pass that drops through hairpin bends into one of the country's most strikingly beautiful settlements — a narrow valley where colourful 19th-century wooden houses crowd the shore of the fjord. The golf course exists here almost as a natural extension of the town's quiet stubbornness: a community maintaining a full life far from Reykjavík.

The course sits in the valley bottom, flanked by steep mountainsides that rise sharply on either side and funnel weather down from the surrounding highlands. Playing conditions can shift quickly — the fjord creates its own microclimate, and wind off the water is a genuine factor. The lush green of the fairways against the grey-blue fjord and the mountain walls makes for scenery that is, by any measure, extraordinary.

Hagavöllur is the kind of course where the round itself is almost secondary to the experience of being there. Seyðisfjörður attracts artists, hikers, and the passengers arriving on the Smyril Line ferry from Europe — and the golf course is a quiet, genuine part of a genuinely unusual place.