WILD ISLANDS
Exploring the rugged North Atlantic
It’s called the ‘‘smokeroom’’, traditionally the only room of a Faroese farm with an open fire to provide heat and light. The smokeroom at Kirkjubour, just outside the Faroe Islands’ capital of Torshavn, is also part of what is believed to be one of the oldest wooden houses – it was built about 900 years ago - to be in continuous use in the world
What is even more remarkable is that Johannes Patursson, who is standing in the smokeroom sipping from a cup of coffee, is the 17th generation of his family to live here.
The farm runs sheep, some cows and a few horses, but catering for visitors to the most important historic site in the Faroes archipelago is now an important source of income. And it’s not just the house that draws travellers – just outside Patursson’s front door is the parish church, Olavskrikya, built in the year 1111 and still in use today, and the ruins of the 14th century St Magnus Cathedral.
Today, the smokeroom is mostly used to host visitors but for past generations of the Paturssons, this was truly the heart of the home – bunks would have lined the walls, the cooking was done here, and in the long winter nights people would spin, weave and knit the wool from the hardy Faroese sheep.
The family run the 800-hectare property mostly on their own, but they do have seasonal help.
‘‘We’ve had shearers from New Zealand,’’ he told us. Kiwis on working holidays do get everywhere around the world but out here, in the North Atlantic, halfway between Iceland and Norway was a surprise.
‘‘They came from, now let me see….’’
I waited, expecting the answer to be a place I’d have to confess I was not particularly familiar with.
‘‘Geraldine,’’ said Patursson. ‘‘Do you know it?’’
I told him I had lived there, my children had gone to school there and I now lived only 30 minutes away.
Sheep were once a mainstay of the Faroese economy, but today salmon farming in the fiords of this 18-island archipelago and fishing have taken over in importance.
Now self-governing under the control of Denmark (about a twohour flight away), the Faroes is believed to have been settled first by Irish monks in about AD700. The Vikings followed and after them came the Norwegians. Intriguingly DNA tests of native Faroese show that about 85 per cent of the men have Scandinavian origins, but about the same proportion of women have Celtic ancestry – the result of Irish women being forcibly shipped to the islands generations ago.
What those women must have thought when they arrived in the Faroes after what was most likely a nightmarishly rough sea voyage can only be imagined as even today the first glimpse of the islands takes one’s breathe way.
Sea cliffs, up to 700 metres in places and some of the highest in the world, rear up out of the Atlantic, and razor sharp ridges are interspersed with verdant green valleys. Glaciers ground their way through the volcanic rock and lava flows that created the Faroes 50-60 million years ago, leaving behind fiords that in places almost sever islands in two, in other places forming deep channels between islands.
The Faroes’ only airport is on Vagar island, and you don’t have to drive far on arrival to see the tenacity that has enabled the Faroese to survive in this extraordinarily challenging environment.
Lowering one’s mates on homemade ropes down precipitous cliff-faces to harvest seabird eggs and even chicks is now largely outlawed. But a popular seasonal activity is hoisting sheep up rocky bluffs during the autumn muster where the ratio is one Faroese per sheep. The Faroese determination to meet any challenge lives on.
Tired of the winding mountain roads, often blocked by snow and beset with avalanches? Drill a tunnel through it.
Thwarted by tumultuous seas crossing from one island to the other? Dig an undersea tunnel.
The islands have 19 tunnels in all, two of them under the Atlantic. And the Faroese have plans for more, too – work has already begun on a tunnel that will be 11km long linking the capital Torshavn on the island of Streymoy to Eystoroy.
On Kalsoy we drove through a tunnel constructed just to provide better access to about 10 homes. Apparently the tunnel took several years to build and by the time it was finished the mostly elderly residents of the village had decided almost en masse to leave anyway. Today the tunnel is mostly for visitors to one of the most strikingly situated sculptures anywhere. The Selkie, or seal woman, is a larger-than-life depiction of a beautiful young woman shedding her seal skin. In rough seas it is often totally submerged in the waves. The story of the Selkie is an ancient predecessor of contemporary Scandinoir – a tale of love, revenge and death.
Although Faroese tell the tragic legends with much relish, they are by no means dour. I sat with a cheerful crowd at a championship football game in Torshavn where not only local beer, but also coffee and homemade cake was served in the clubhouse at halftime.
A Torshavn taxi driver explained that music from thrash metal to traditional chain dancing was a vital part of Faroese culture. Turned out he’d been one of the first Faroese to record with the BBC. My second taxi ride in Torshavn was to a dinner of gravlax or raw salmon, slow cooked lamb with a tang of the sea, and a confection of rhubarb and cream. Rumours that visitors have to exist on a diet of fermented lamb, stuffed puffin and cods’ heads were grossly exaggerated.
The driver, on hearing my accent, asked straightway what part of New Zealand I came from.
Had she met the shearers of Kirkjubour? No, apparently an exchange student from Auckland had lived with her family for a year.
‘‘Maybe I will see you there one day,’’ she said.
If she’d come from anywhere but the Faroes I would not have given that another thought. But for a nation that regards near-vertical sheep mustering and undersea tunnels as unofficial national sports, I wouldn’t be at all surprised.