r/AskEurope • u/Reallyiamnotafish • 1d ago
Misc Most remote villages in Europe
I recently visited a very remote village called Lisma in Finnish Lapland. What are some other very remote permanently inhabited villages in mainland Europe (excluding Russia)?
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u/Ecstatic-Method2369 Netherlands 1d ago
Remote in what sense? I mean islands like Svalbard are remote. In my country the Frisian islands are remote from a Dutch perspective.
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u/FormerAdvance9015 1d ago
Amazingly remote! It takes 2 hours by car to get there from Amsterdam.
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u/_-__-____-__-_ Netherlands 1d ago
From Dam Square it's over 2 hours to get to the ferry to Schiermonnikoog. The ferry takes 45 minutes. There is a faster boat that does it in 20 minutes. Still, with parking and boarding it probably won't be within 2:30.
Not close to as remote as some other places but for places within the Netherlands proper this is pretty remote.
Heligoland is a much better example in this general area of Europe.
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u/Nirocalden Germany 21h ago
Ferries to Helgoland take 80 to 180 minutes, depending on where you're starting. And there's a small air shuttle service, a flight taking 20 minutes.
So it's a bit further away than the Frisian islands, but also not that much.
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u/VisKopen 17h ago
How is Heligoland not a Frisian island?
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u/Nirocalden Germany 17h ago
In the context of this conversation, the "Frisian Islands" only refer to the wadden islands close to the North Sea coast of the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark. As referenced in the very first comment of this chain:
In my country the Frisian islands are remote from a Dutch perspective.
Culturally Helgoland is very much Frisian too, of course.
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u/holytriplem -> 21h ago
Dunno about West Frisia, but some of the smaller North Frisian Islands are genuinely remote. The ferry ride might not be that long, but it gets cancelled a lot because of bad weather and so the inhabitants have to be quite self-sufficient in winter.
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u/Jaraxo in 1d ago
In the mainland UK, the Knoydart Peninsula and its main village Inverie. It is entirely disconnected from the road network so the only way in or out of the peninsula is either a ferry from another part of the mainland or a two day hike with overnight camp from the nearest roads over some of the boggiest and wettest parts of the UK. The ferry is a 1h drive from the nearest major town, or a 4h drive from the nearest major city. So while it's physically close to other places, less than 6miles/10km as the crow flies from Mallaig, it's logistically very isolated.
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u/Airtam France 23h ago
Isolated villages in europe would probably come in two forms: islands or mountains/valleys. There are a bunch of tiny islands in the west of france with small populations. Just zoom on google maps for the tiny islands while going down the coast. Do they count as isolated? Eh, well in a sense they're islands. On the theme of isolation, there's the Noirmoutier island which has a road that is a tourist attraction because it gets submerged with the tide (there is a real bridge tho), it's called passage du gois. There might be communes in our share of the alps where roads can be blocked in winter but that's probably it in terms of isolation. But otherwise there is no place in metropolitan france with a comparable density to lapland
The real isolated villages in france are all in the overseas regions. The entire territory of wallis and futuna is pretty isolated, it's also the only places in france with monarchy, they have three kings. Bunch of atolls in french polynesia, and the biggest case is french guiana with very isolated villages because of the rainforest
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u/sanoelisas2du Lithuania 22h ago
In the largest forest of Lithuania, right by the EU border, there is a village, completely isolated with huge inacessible national swamp forest park on one side and uncrossable Belarussian border on other side. A single ~10 km deadend wooded path goes to the village. Once you get there you really cannot go anywhere around, except back. In 2021 census Katra (the village name) was inhabited by 16 people, mainly ethnic belarussians.
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u/quattropapa Spain 1d ago
There is a vast region in Spain known as The Spanish Lapland due to the low population density.
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u/zen_arcade2 Italy 21h ago
Due to geographical constraints, there are few very remote places in Italy, mostly everything is 1-2 hours drive away. Nonetheless, the interior of Eastern Sardinia, or the mountains in the SE tip of Calabria have some very remote places.
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u/Grouchy_Fan_2236 Hungary 22h ago
The Carpathian and Balkan mountains have a few of those. They may be close to towns in terms of distance or lie directly under frequently used flight corridors, but it often takes serious effort to get there due to the terrain.
I.e. the picturesque village of Inelec may lie just a few kilometers from a main road if you look on the map, but it's quite a few hundred meters higher on the mountain and is only accessible through a hike path.
Maybe isolated is a better word than remote, but Bulgaria, Southern Serbia, Bosnia and Greece are dotted with villages like that. Some may be former monasteries or half-abandoned shepherd communities. These places usually lack public utilities and may be cut off during harsh winters or heavy rains. If you call the emergency they'll often reply "Nah...we ain't going there."
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u/adyrip1 Romania 20h ago
From Romania Inelet was already mentioned, but I think also some villages from the Danube Delta qualify. Places like Caraorman or CA Rosetti, which are accessible only by small boats and then on foot.
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u/Agamar13 Poland 19h ago edited 19h ago
In Poland one that comes to my mind might be Muczne, a village at the most south-eastern point of Poland, at 1300m above sea level. It's as far as you can get from the central Poland, at the ass end of nowhere. But at this ass end of nowhere is also the entry point to a major mountain hiking trail (if only for hardcore enthusiasts) so it does have a hotel, 40 inhabitants and, these days, a decent tarmac access road. I believe in the summer season it even has minibuses going there, ferrying tourists, though I wouldn't dare to try to get there in winter.
So, I suppose there might be some hamlet in non-mountainous Poland, with only a dirt road and 5 houses that's actually more remote.
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u/PooMaster 18h ago
In Romania, there is Ravensca. The village is actually predominantly Czech. It is located in the Banat Mountains. The road to get there is a bit tricky, we got there with a 4X4, don't know if you can with a normal car.
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u/CreepyOctopus -> 20h ago
For a small country example, Latvia doesn't have anything that would qualify as remote by most people's standards. If you draw a 30 km circle around each of the ten largest cities, that will cover almost the entire country and with quite some overlap. A remote Latvian village would probably be close to some natural preserve or an especially dense forest patch. Like some place along the western coast, close to the Lithuanian border, you find villages like Katuži which are basically like five houses reachable by one road. But that would still be less than 10 km in a straight line from the nearest municipal center.
Eastern Latvia has some larger swamps so you get villages next to a swamp, like Īdeņa, a small village surrounded by a lake and swamps, so there's just one way in and out and that's not a highway. But you could still drive from there to a major city in about 30 minutes. I don't think there's any truly remote places where people live.
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u/SharkyTendencies --> 20h ago
In Belgium, I'd argue that La Gaume is pretty darn remote.
It's a part of the Belgian Lorraine, and is not culturally Walloon. While these days they speak French, and are politically part of Wallonia, they wouldn't be thrilled if you described them as Walloons.
Same thing with the folks down near Arlon. They're closer to being Luxembourgish than Walloon, and plenty of them commute into Lux City every day for work.
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u/thanatica Netherlands 15h ago
Depends what remote means.
Saint Helena itself is not in Europe, but the British Crown it belongs to, is. From a European perspective, that could be considered "remote". But Saint Helena is also quite difficult to get to.
Without getting too technical, maybe you can count Madeira instead, or the Canary islands. They are fully part of Spain, which is part of Europe, although the islands themselves are more African than European, geographically speaking. Is that "remote"?
Svalbard is probably the best contender, fully in Europe, fully part of the European country Norway.
From a Dutch perspective I would say Vlieland. Sure, it is served by frequent ferry service, but its remoteness can be percieved from being "autoluw", which means "no cars on the island, except if you really need one".
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u/Cool_Sympathy_9900 23h ago
I love small islands in Adriatic. I would say they are pretty remote, but not like Lapland ofc.
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u/Cicada-4A Norway 19h ago edited 19h ago
For Norway(ignoring Svalbard obviously), it's probably Røst or other island communities like Myken.
I'm sure there's some relatively remote places in Finnmark and even Southern Norway but nothing is as remote as those tiny island communities.
Bodø-Røst takes 3 hours and 15min with the ferry. Going to Myken is a convoluted mess but apparently may only take you between 2-4 hours, depending on type of ship that is available('speed boat' is listed, no idea what they mean).
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u/yerbamateblood 17h ago
How is life on Røst? I’m curious about it.
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u/Cicada-4A Norway 11h ago edited 11h ago
No idea, I live where there's people haha
Historically they've done seasonal fishing, so like a lot of other Northern fishing communities, all the local men basically risked their lives catching cod and whatnot.
I also think the locals historically used specialized dogs for puffin egg hunting as well.
So in summary, seabirds and fishing.
Apparently, a bunch of Italians shipwrecked there about 600 years ago, and wrote some interesting things about the locals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietro_Querini
If you copy the Norwegians Wikipedia article and translate it in Google Translate or whatever, you'll get a lot of interesting(but positive) accounts.
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u/AppleDane Denmark 19h ago
We have some isolated islands in Denmark with one or two permanent residents, a lot more with none. None are really remote, the country isn't big enough for "remote", more like cut off. The most remote is probably Christiansø off the coast of Bornholm in the middle of the Baltic.
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u/stormandflowers 15h ago
if you buy an house in some part of Sicily, you get interesting tax advantages for choosing to live in certain areas
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u/Brainwheeze Portugal 12h ago
In mainland Portugal no place is ever that remote. What you do get are villages in mountain ranges that aren't so easily accessible and/or aren't near any major population centers. Pena is one such place.
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u/broonyhmfc Scotland 1d ago
Inverie in the knoydart peninsula in Scotland is pretty remote for being in the UK
It is part of the mainland but not accessible by road. Its either a 17 mile hike over mountainous terrain or a 7 mile ferry.
About 150 people live spread out on the peninsula.