After Ósvör we drove up Bolafjall — the highest point you can reach by road in the Westfjords at 2,093 feet. The access road branches off Route 630 above Bolungarvík and climbs 6 miles to the summit on a narrow gravel track with gradients up to 12% and no guardrails. The road was built in 1986 for military purposes and opened to civilian traffic in 2002.

At the top is a smooth barren plateau with views in all directions. The observation platform, a 60 tonnes of steel cantilevered over the cliff edge, opened in 2022 and extends out over a sheer drop into Ísafjarðardjúp. The fjord stretches 50 miles below and the Jökulfirðir fjord system opens to the north toward Hornstrandir. On a clear day the claim is that Greenland is visible on the horizon — we could not confirm it but the distance is theoretically possible at around 170 miles.

The radar installation dominating the summit plateau is one of four stations that make up the Iceland Air Defence System. The station was established as a NATO radar station in January 1992, its construction paid by the NATO Infrastructure Fund, and is now operated by the Icelandic Coast Guard under joint NATO direction as part of Icelandic Air Policing. Iceland has no standing military but its geography makes it one of NATO’s most strategically significant members. The GIUK gap is the stretch of ocean between Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom and was routinely used by Soviet long-range bombers and maritime reconnaissance aircraft transiting toward the Atlantic from bases at Arkhangelsk and Murmansk. Monitoring that gap was the original reason the radar network was built, and it remains the reason it is still operational.