Vaygach Island stretches roughly 100 kilometers in length and up to 45 kilometers in width, its highest point reaching 170 meters above sea level. The bedrock is predominantly limestone, with argillaceous slates and sandstone underlying the surface in places. The island's elevation above the sea is geologically recent, and raised beaches along the coast testify to the ongoing process of glacial rebound. Rocky ridges run along the island's length, broken by rivers, swamps, and small lakes. The coastline alternates between low cliffs and flat tundra meeting the water's edge. Ice has scored the rocks heavily, though geologists attribute this to marine ice rather than glaciers. The only settlement is Varnek, a small community on the southern shore that serves as the island's sole permanent human presence.

What Vaygach lacks in trees, it compensates for in birds. BirdLife International has designated the island an Important Bird Area, and for good reason. The marshes and lakes support significant populations of bean geese, barnacle geese, and greater white-fronted geese. Tundra swans nest here. Long-tailed ducks and goosanders frequent the coastal waters. Snowy owls patrol the tundra, and peregrine falcons hunt along the cliffs. Grasses, mosses, and Arctic wildflowers carpet the ground in summer, but the only trees are occasional dwarf willows crouching in sheltered spots. Foxes and lemmings appear, though the land mammal count is modest. At least five polar bears are known to inhabit the island. In 2007, the World Wide Fund for Nature and the Russian government established a nature reserve here, acknowledging the ecological significance of both the island and its surrounding waters, which shelter walruses, seals, and endangered whales.

Until the 19th century, Vaygach Island functioned as the most important sacred site of the Nenets people, the indigenous reindeer herders of Russia's Arctic coast. Two principal idols guarded the island: Vesako at the southern end and Khadako at the northern. These were not small carvings but polycephalic wooden figures, multi-headed statues that the Nenets painted with the blood of holy animals, primarily reindeer. Sacrificial piles of driftwood, deer antlers, and the skulls of bears and deer accumulated around them over generations. European travelers documented these sites with a mixture of fascination and incomprehension. Christian missionaries eventually converted many Nenets, but the conversion did not erase the older reverence. Travelers reported that the Nenets continued to regard the sacrificial piles with deep respect, a persistence of belief that no official religion could entirely displace. The island has been called the "Easter Island of the Arctic" for the power its sacred sites once held over the people of the region.

From the air, Vaygach Island appears as a low, mottled presence between two seas, its tundra surface a patchwork of brown and green in summer, uniform white in winter. The Yugorsky Strait separates it from the mainland to the south, while the Kara Strait opens to the north toward Novaya Zemlya's mountainous coast. F. G. Jackson circumnavigated the island on foot in 1893, documenting its geography and wildlife. H. J. Pearson followed in 1899, exploring eastward beyond the Pechora region. Both found a landscape of extraordinary isolation, where the distances between human settlements could be measured in days of travel rather than hours. That isolation persists. Varnek remains the only village. The island has no airport, no regular ferry service, and no roads beyond rough tracks. Reaching Vaygach requires determination, and the island rewards it with a silence so complete that the only sounds are wind, water, and the calls of geese passing overhead.