Múlafossur is a ribbon of water thirty metres high that falls off a sea cliff on the island of Vágar, in the Faroes, straight into the Atlantic. There is no river mouth and no beach, because the sea is eating this coast faster than the stream can cut down to meet it. The valley is left hanging, so the water leaves from halfway up the cliff, off a clean lip of basalt. On a strong westerly it does not fall at all. The gusts catch the ribbon below the lip and carry it back over the clifftop, so the water climbs instead and comes down as spray on the grass behind you. It happens and stops with the squalls, so it is worth waiting one out.
Above the drop sits Gásadalur, a handful of dark timber houses on a shelf between the cliff and the mountain. The lanes take you minutes to walk, and the pass rises straight behind them. A marked path leaves the road and reaches the ledge above the fall in two minutes, and there is no railing between you and the drop. The evening is what to stay for. This far north the midsummer sun slides down behind Mykines close to eleven at night, and the light lies warm on the water and the turf roofs long after the day visitors have driven off. The cliff path north of the village puts you level with the flight lines, where puffins come whirring in off the water and fulmars hang almost still on the updraught. In a cold snap icicles fringe the basalt ledges and the roofs go white, and the fall pours straight through the ice. Until 2004 none of this had a road. The village postman climbed a pass more than 400 metres high three times a week with the mail on his back, in whatever the Atlantic was doing. His route from Bøur is a marked path now, and it is still the only way to arrive the way everyone once had to.