St. Petersburg to Göteborg: Faroe Islands

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.