Friendship without frontiers

You’re miles from home, you don’t speak the language and you’re lost. At precisely that point help arrives in the most unexpected form. In the spirit of the season, our writers salute Good Samaritans worldwide

The remarkable thing about random acts of kindness is not how rare they are, but how frequent. The well-advertised possibilities of human cruelty would make you think that homo homini lupus is the size of it: man is a wolf to man.

But wander the world and what do you find? Strangers going out of their way to give each other painstaking directions. People lending each other umbrellas, drivers thanking each other by flashing their hazard lights.

If humans were the rational maximisers of advantage that some economists would have us believe, rich people would never return from poor countries alive. But, in general, the human response to vulnerability is not to prey on it, but to help. And very often, it seems to me, generosity varies inversely with the wealth of the giver.

My highlight reel of unexpected kindnesses could quickly become the length of the main feature: a Fijian medical student who let me share half his berth on a train from Darjeeling to New Jalpaiguri that was so crowded I would never have been able to board it without his help. A Siberian trucker who changed a flat tyre on my car in Chukotka and waved off my offer of assistance. “It’s like drinking a cup of

It was as though Helen Mirren had invited a stranger around for pie and mash

tea for me,” he said. A Mongolian noodle-seller who, in Ulaanbaatar, gave me a bottle of home-made yak vodka as a leaving present.

But the current prize for going beyond the call of duty I’m awarding to a Faroese lady called Laura Joensen, who invited me to lunch in her cosy, turf-roofed house in Tjornuvik. She didn’t know me from Adam, but I’d bumped into her niece during a walk on the blustery Faroese coast and expressed an interest in traditional Faroese food. I received a lunch invitation for the following day.

Over lunch, I realised that Laura is an actress and quite celebrated in her homeland. It was rather as though Helen Mirren had invited a total stranger around for pie and mash. It was an unforgettable meal – and not just because of Laura’s generosity. She served fermented lamb that smelled like blue cheese, whale meat, and a sauce of sheep guts called garnatalg that is served on wind-dried fish. She was aware that some palates might find the dishes a challenge. “It’s enough to say “like” or “not like” without saying “ugh”,” she said, with a slight steeliness. The food was an acquired taste, but the sense of conviviality was universal.

Thank you, Laura.

DINNER IS ON METrying out the cuisine was on the menu in the Faroe Islands