The stiff top layer in a soil profile, which can happen in winter, may change the isolation effect of the wave barrier. The research scope of this paper is the investigation of the propagation of surface waves in layered soil with a stiff layer on its top, and the isolation effect of the solid stiff wave barrier. The investigations have been performed numerically by the Boundary-Element Method as a two-dimensional problem. A strip foundation vibrated harmonically in vertical direction was considered as the vibration source. Three soil profiles, a homogeneous half-space, two profiles with different thickness of stiff top layer, with two different types of wave barriers were investigated. The profiles with a stiff top layer show considerable reductions of the amplitude of the vibration in comparison to the homogeneous soil profile. The layered soil profiles with a stiff top layer do not show wave propagation velocities as high as they are expected from the material properties. Furthermore the vibration amplitudes in a frozen soil are much smaller with distance than in a non-frozen soil.