Organizing every detail of a trip, choosing attractions months in advance, marking restaurants, viewpoints and places to photograph has become almost routine. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to plan an itinerary before you go, but what would happen if, at least for a few hours, you decided to give up control and let a navigator choose the road?
That is precisely the idea behind the Self-Navigating Car Adventures, the autonomous-driving car adventures offered by the Faroe Islands and recently expanded. An experience that transforms moving from one place to another into an essential part of the journey and that aims to recover an element increasingly rare in the age of social media: surprise.
A study published at the beginning of 2026 highlighted that two-thirds of travelers arrived at their destination with the impression of being in a place already known: even before departure, that destination had already been seen dozens or hundreds of times online, through videos, photos and content shared on social networks. The Faroe Islands chose to respond to this growing familiarity with an experiment that goes in the opposite direction: to depart without knowing exactly where you are headed.
A Secret Itinerary to Discover the Faroe Islands
The initiative allows you to step aboard a car and rely on the GPS directions that lead along a route consisting of four to six stops, to be completed over three or six hours, depending on the experience chosen.
The detail that makes the adventure different from a traditional road trip is that the destinations remain secret until arrival: it is therefore not possible to know in advance which church, village, landscape or corner of the archipelago will appear at the next stop.
The places included in the routes were selected with the contribution of residents to offer a more authentic perspective of the Faroe Islands. The itineraries are also designed to avoid turning the experience into a kind of four-wheeled organized tour. Some stops may be shared across different routes, but no one receives at the same moment the identical itinerary.
From Villages to Historic Churches, Possible Surprises
The project started with 30 itineraries and has now been expanded with the addition of another 15 routes; even the existing routes have been enriched with further possible stops, increasing the combinations and opportunities to encounter less predictable places.
Options range from nature to culture. One of the stops could be the Church of Funningur, one of the oldest wooden churches with a turf roof in the Faroe Islands; or the navigator could be guided to the Church of Viðareiði, from which you get a view of one of Europe’s tallest sea cliffs.
The journey could then continue among the fjords of the archipelago, perhaps along a hiking route, or stop in front of the waters of the Funningsvatn lake. Among the possible destinations is also the remote village of Syðradalur, where you might find yourself taking a dip in an outdoor pool.
How to Reach the Faroe Islands and Start the Adventure
If you wish to try this unusual travel experience, the main gateway to the archipelago is the Vágar Airport, the only one on the Faroe Islands.
The national airline Atlantic Airways connects the archipelago year-round with Billund and Copenhagen in Denmark, as well as Oslo and Reykjavík. Seasonal routes are also planned from other European cities, including Barcelona, London Gatwick and Paris Charles de Gaulle.
An alternative is the ferry departing from Hirtshals, in northern Denmark: the crossing to the Faroe Islands lasts about 30 hours and allows reaching the archipelago by sea.
