Faroe Islands - Take 2

We’ve been here for a week now and thoroughly enjoyed every day. If puffin quantity alone was the measure by which you determined the best of the Faroes then we definitely saw the best on the first day, but I’d venture to say that the remainder of the islands, and we have visited 10 out of a total of eighteen, are all beautiful. 

One island remains uninhabited, but otherwise each has it’s own history for, although they belong together as a single country, many of the islands were, until recently, only connected by sailing vessel and only then in good weather. Nowadays getting from one end to the other is a piece of cake, especially when you compare to our distances back home. There are two major undersea tunnels and a number of bridges linking various islands these days. Tunnels sometimes run across from one side of an island to the other or for significant distances along its length, linking the few small flat areas where the villages are.

The first visitors to the Faroes were Irish monks back in 625 AD. They stayed but didn't exactly get along with their followers, the Vikings (from about 800 AD) and settled on just one of the small islands by themselves leaving the remainder to the Vikings. As they had no women they soon died out and so all today’s Faroese trace their lineage back to the Vikings.

The Faroese language is unique, spoken only here although there may be some resemblance to Icelandic. All the Faroese understand and can speak most of the Nordic and Scandinavian languages as well as English thankfully, otherwise we'd be continually bamboozled. They have their own currency, their own beer (Foroya Bjór) and their own hard liquor (Livsins Vatn). They are not a member of the EU. They do recognise the Danish royals as their own and they love our Mary from Tassie, so, regardless of what the Sea Shepherd people think, the Faroese are alright in my book.

We enjoyed two days and nights on Suduroy, the south island, getting there by car ferry. Our B&B was with a delightful lady by the name of Vigdis Sigmundsdottir who, in her spare time, is an accomplished artist. Her work portraying Viking sagas has appeared on Faroe stamps. 

Vigdis Sigmudsdottir's work - a simple view of her street. Made entirely from cut and torn pieces of coloured papers painstakingly glued together to form a picture.

Church door in Tveroyri 

old boat sheds outside Vigdis' house

Porkeri (pronounced poor-cher-ee), Suduroy Island. This was the home town of our Suduroy guide, Zakarias Beck, a retired sea captain. He loved his job and hummed continuously.

Vegur, Suduroy. A rare faint touch of pink in the sky.

old boat sheds at Tveroyri

the beach at Famjin, Suduroy

Then two more nights on Stremoy, in the world's smallest capital, Torshavn, where, in the old town, the timber and grass roof houses were tiny and colourful (if black is a colour) and the streets had no names. Spent a lovely couple of hours wandering around and getting lost. Our B&B hostess was a lovely old lady who baked us bread each day. 

colourful Torshavn harbour 

old Torshavn

a hose out of the kitchen window to water the rooftop grass. Not going so well in this case.

rowing is pretty much the only organised sport (apart from soccer). These traditional Faroese boats are all they use. No dragon boats or 'normal' racing shells.

Our host in Torshavn, Tove Dam (sitting next to me). She also had a German couple staying at the same time.

Old Torshavn

ditto

and again

Tove said that we haven't seen the real Faroe Islands unless we went to a place she called "Chichiboar". It took us ages to work out that it was the same place we had intended visiting all along  - Kirkjibour, where some of the oldest wooden buildings in the Faroes still stand.

Kirkjibour (or Chichiboar) if you like.

Kirkjibour

inside the old museum at Kirkjibour

Next day we went to Burdoy Island to stay at the Faroe's second largest town, Klaksvik with another old sea captain who loved to talk, so much so that we had to excuse ourselves in order not to miss our ferry to Kalsoy the next day. He recommended we go to a great little restaurant near the tip of the adjacent island Vidoy called Matstove hjá Elisabet, in the small village of Vidareidi, for some home style cooking. It is the only place in the Faroes where you can eat puffin .

Sue testing the waters of the North Atlantic - at Fuglafjordur of course. Surprisingly warm.

We drove to the end of Vidoy island for dinner at this quaint little town which you can barely see across the water.  OMG. The sky is blue!!!!!!

Another pretty picture

Old church in Vidareidi, where we had dinner. The oldest headstone was dated from 1657. There was an even older church and graves there before until a wild storm one evening carried them into the sea, so local legend has it.

Salmon farming on the way to dinner. Couldn't decide between salmon or puffin. 

So, what does puffin taste like?

Actually, there was no puffin, so I had to have Guillemot and it tastes fishy. Very fishy. But nice. Sue had the lamb.

Today we had a big hike up a steep mountain side to Kallur lighthouse on Kalsoy and now we are in Gjogv (pronounced jek-v), a beautiful little town with a natural harbour and famous in these parts for international music festivals in the natural amphitheatre surrounding the town.

Cool traditional clobber. Great for dancing in apparently. We were all going to Kalsoy on the ferry.

More lovely scenery on Kalsoy. That's our hire car. The one with the ahem, expensive scratch on the bonnet. Don't ask. It's a long story!

Enjoying the view from the tip of Vidoy island at Kallur lighthouse, from where you can see six capes.

After a hard days holidaying, it was time to relax by the sea with a couple of Foroya Bjórs and a Livsins Vatn (or two) while waiting for someone else to cook dinner.

Beautiful Gjogv where we will stay two nights.

a natural cove at Gjogv with the Kallur lighthouse in the background.

We woke to low cloud and rain on our last day in the Faroes.

These two pillars are known as the Giant and the Hag. Legend has it they were Icelandic trolls loved the Faroes for their beauty and wanted to pull them closer to Iceland. One night they put a rope around the Faroes to do that but then they argued so much that the sun came up and, in doing so, turned them to stone.

Saksun

The old grass covered church at Saksun

and its cemetery.

And so ends our time in the Faroe Islands. Thoroughly recommended as a holiday destination. next stop is Iceland. Until then...

Faroe Islands

What? Where's that? A tiny speck in the North Atlantic ocean halfway between Scotland, Iceland and Norway. A small cluster of islands populated by hardy Faroese fisherman and farmers who share their rocky outcrop with woolly sheep and millions of birds. How does one describe this place? Heaven on earth maybe or the next best thing at least. How about National Geographic Traveler rating the Faroe Islands as their number 1 destination among 111 island communities around the world in 2007 and I doubt anywhere else has stolen that mantle since. We’ve used an abundance of superlatives before in describing some of the places we’ve been lucky to visit, but this is like nowhere we’ve been before: unsurpassed natural beauty combined with an ancient cultural heritage dating back to the earliest Viking period. The sheep graze on grass so thick it's like walking on foam rubber and the puffins are impossibly cute. We couldn't stop photographing them

Foroyar (Faroe Islands). It's not so far from Iceland, Scotland and Norway.

Flying into Vagar from Copenhagen we sat next to a young girl who happened to be studying medicine in Denmark. Turns out she knew half the folks on the plane. The Faroes is a bit like that. Anyway she was full of suggestions about where to go and what to see. We have a car and so it’s easy to get about and the distances are tiny. One end of Vagar to the other is maybe twenty minutes if you don’t stop for photos and about 3 hours if you do. Did I say it’s incredibly beautiful? The typical turf covered stone cottages are especially photogenic.

Sorvagur harbour, where we stayed two nights. A Sea Shepherd vessel was in the harbour causing consternation among the locals (who traditionally eat whale meat)

Bour village on Vagar Is. with Tindholmur in the middle background

Sorvagur harbour

Yesterday we managed to take a helicopter flight over to Mykines (meech-ee-ness). Lucky we booked in April because it was full and the next flight wasn’t until Wednesday. Mykines, said to be the most beautiful of all the islands (we’ll let you know later) is home to just 10 people and vast numbers of puffins, gannets and sheep. Although proud of their knitting industry the sheep don't appear to be shorn regularly and many of them have scraggly bits hanging off and looking like they are having a bad hair day! Our guide on Mykines, Harald (note the Viking spelling) took us on a walk of some 5 hours where we scrambled up and down some slippery slopes to get a closer look at the birds, us in our hiking boots and him in his wellies. We took 466 photos on that outing alone. Those damn puffins are sooooo cute!

Looking back toward Vagar on the way to Mykines with Tindholmur in the foreground.

Touchdown in Mykines and can't wait to get started

Didn't have to wait long

Another one of those WOW moments. The tiny village of Mykines is so beautiful - more homes than people (some are summer houses only)

Puffins : they can be quite approachable...

...or not. Hard to get close

Setting out for our walk on Mykines 

A walk to the tip of Mykines and back takes about 5 hours

The North Atlantic was surprisingly calm. Iceland is that way a few hundred kilometres.

Time for lunch with our Danish friends and Harald (second from the right). The Luftwaffe tried unsuccessfullyto bomb the lighthouse during WWII

Incredibly steep. Ideal for gannet breeding. Even the sheep go over the edge in search of greener grass.

Heading back to Mykines after lunch

So many of them and so cute.

Back to Sorveygur by ferry, passing beneath Tindholmur.

Gasadalur - another tiny village at the western end of Vagar. This was the last town to be connected by road via a tunnel to the rest of the island. Before that the postie used to hike across the mountains to deliver the mail and anything bigger had to come by boat (when the weather allowed)

Where's the shearer when you need him? Is this a bad hair day or what?

Today we drove from Vagar (where the airport is situated) to Torshavn, the world’s smallest capital apparently, on the main island of Stremoy. Getting there involved driving through a seven kilometre undersea tunnel. Along the way we passed more delightful little villages, many of them are tucked into giant, lush green, grassy amphitheatres. After wandering around Torshavn for an hour or so we came 2 hours south on a car ferry to the island of Suduroy for two nights.

Midvagur

Sandavagur

The 'fanciful' 1917 church at Sandavagur is certainly picturesque

Trollkonufingur: ugly sounding name but beautiful place

Oyrargjogv: just three homes here and a disused boat ramp. A sunken ship offshore probably doesn't help.

OK, there's coffee but goodness knows what else.

From our B&B in Tvoroyri (Tver-oi-ri) where we are staying with a delightful old lady, herself an artist, we will be doing a guided tour of Suduroy Island No doubt lots more photos, so will post a separate blog for that. Until then...