The Faroe Islands (Jul 2018)
The main - in fact, only - airport in the Faroes. The approach was quite scary - we seemed to fly very close to mountains shrouded in clouds and fog. Fog in summer causes a lot of problems here; earlier in the week a football team from Montenegro got stuck in the airport for hours after fog closed in.
The original airport was actually built by the British army when they occupied the islands during World War 2 (after Denmark fell to the Germans).
Taking the bus from the airpot to Tórshavn, the capital, I could immediately see from the scenery that this was somewhere a bit different.
The two islands in the distance are Hestur ("Horse") and Koltur ("Colt"). The rings are salmon farms, I think.
This is the old part of Tórshavn, where most of the houses have turf roofs. I could see this street from the apartment I was staying in; it felt like something out of The Hobbit.
The government buildings in Tórshavn. The Faroe Islands are part of Denmark, but self-governing.
This is the Prime Minister's office in Tórshavn - 10 Downing Street it ain't, I could have just walked up to the door and knocked! No visible security whatsoever.
While most of the houses in the old part of Tórshavn seemed well-maintained, this one clearly needs a bit of TLC.
A cute little house, fit for a Hobbit, in the old part of Tórshavn.
A very green-eyed Faroese cat!
A gate marking the boundary between infield and outfield, between civilisation and wilderness. The infield is the cultivated, tamed part of the land around a village, and the outfield is the wild part beyond. It felt like you were crossing an important, maybe even dangerous, boundary.
The beautiful scenery as I hiked across the mountain from Tórshavn to Kirkjubøur. The island in the distance is Hestur. You can just about see the one village on it at the bottom centre of the mountain.
The island of Koltur (meaning "Colt"). Only one family lives on the island.
There are about 70,000 sheep in the Faroe Islands, and only about 50,000 people.
Sheep came in all sorts of colours. I saw one that was white up to the neck, then pure black from neck to top of head, like it was wearing a jumper.
The village of Kirkjubøur
A friendly Faroese horse at Kirkjubøur.
Three sheets to the wind...
On the outskirts of Tórshavn. It’s the smallest capital city in the world - a ten minute walk took me to this point, where sheep and goats were grazing.
Over the weekend I was staying in Tórshavn there was a big concert in the centre of town, as part of the run up to the Faroes National day, which marks the introduction of Christianity to the Islands a thousand years ago. The concert included 70s rockers Smokie (“Living Next Door to Alice”) - apparently they’re big in the Faroe Islands. It went on to 3.30am and could be heard all over town - these guys like to party in the summer!
The cathedral in Tórshavn. Note the model boat on the ceiling; many Faroese churches feature these because of the importance of fishing and frequent tragedies at sea.
The picturesque village of Bøur, on the island of Vágar.
One of the most photographed waterfalls on Instagram, Mulafossur. The water falls straight into the sea. Unfortunately on the day I visited there was thick fog and heavy rain, so it’s a terrible picture!
The old church in Bøur.
A lovely waterfall in the village.
The churches sometimes feel like they’re protecting the villages from the wildness of the nature beyond.
The very colourful church In Sandavagur.
Colourful old boathouses in Vestmanna, on the island of Streymoy.
The church in the village.
Traffic jam in Vestmanna! Chickens seem to roam freely in a lot of Faroese villages.
The weather was starting to close in, ominously. This was typical of the Faroes; you could get all four seasons in one day, but the rain never seemed far away.
Coming back into Tórshavn from Vestmanna. Now the sun is shining! What also struck me was how different the weather could be on the different islands, even at the same time.
A ferry in the harbour in Tórshavn. Most tourists I talked to seemed to be Scandinavian, especially Danish and Norwegian.
In Klaksvik, the second city in the Faroes. The local brewery is here; I had some of their Black Sheep dark beer and it was pretty good.
An old boat on the ceiling of the church in Klaksvik.
The harbour in Klaksvik. Soon after this it started pouring so I retired to a cafe (in fact, it seemed to be the only one) for a delicious lunch - pulled-pork burger and fried potatoes. I got speaking to some Norwegian tourists who wanted to know about one thing - Brexit. This was to become a recurring topic of conversation with other (mostly Scandinavian) tourists. The general opinion was that the British had gone completely crazy.
This really could be in Sligo or somewhere else in the west of Ireland.
On the island of Streymoy, at the site of a weather station. I think the island in the distance is Koltur. Five minutes after I’d taken this picture you couldn’t see it at all, it had been completely swallowed up in the fog.
More shaggy sheep. On one of the tours I did we saw (in the distance) sheep being sheared at a farm. Family and friends all get together to round up the sheep and help with the shearing process.
The road ahead...the Faroe Islands have excellent roads linking all the islands via tunnels.
The abandoned Norwegian whaling station at Við Áir. It was last used in the 1960s. There are only two other whaling stations like this still existing in the world - one in Australia and the other in South Georgia.
You can see the winch used to pull up the whale carcasses.
It had quite a desolate, spooky feel. Its past would have been quite bloody.
The wonderfully remote old church at Saksun. This was at the end of a long, desolate-feeling valley, very atmospheric with the mist swirling across the mountains.
