#esturoy

[mostly-history]

Slættaratindur, the tallest mountain of the Faroe Islands, in winter.

[mostly-history]

Slættaratindur (Faroe Islands).

At 880m above sea level, Slættaratindur is the highest mountain in the Faroe Islands.  It is situated in the north of the Esturoy region.  The village Funningur lies at the foot of the mountain, but the summit is not visible from the village.  Its name means “flat summit”, and in clear weather, the entire archipelago can be seen from the top.

Slættaratindur from the streets of Funningur.

[travel200899]

Faroe Islands Diary, day 1

Our commute to this wonderful part of the world was quite exhilarating. The longest detour you can ever imagine.

YYZ-VCE-CPH-FAE Except the VCE-CPH incurred a good 9 hours delay, leading us to deal with what could have been a disastrous situation. AKA vacation cancellation and heartbreak and possibly fund depletion.  But we made it to Copenhagen. At 1:00 AM.

Woke up to the sudden jolt of panic at…

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[travel200899]

Sitting in our cozy accommodation back in Nordagota which seems more and more like home, I am going over the gazillion of pictures I have taken of this beautiful, by far the least touched by tourists, vacation destination of our choice. The view from the window is that of the towering green hill, where the farmer limps over with his bucket of feed to entice the sheep to come close to him. His border collie isn’t allowed in, so he circles around the thin metal wire fence till he gets gestured over to either come in, or go around the fence, to round up the stubborn set of sheep. I will miss waking up to this but the memories have all been recorded in the tiny sandisk.

I had started by penning down all the places we were visiting and what to see there, but then what are books for? Internet has all the available information at our fingertips, leaving little for us to actually discover. We walk around with Lonely Planet in our hands making sure that we don’t miss out on anything but in reality all we are doing is re-living someone else’s research and taking pictures of the same pictures we find in these books. I am guilty of doing the same. Of taking pictures but not really reading too much related to useful information, that would make me very smart. Let’s be real here!

Meeting the family hosting us and interacting with them and their 3 kids has been the highlight of my trip. Jon is a musician by trade and his lovely wife Elisabeth works as quality control in a fishing plant. Both Jon and Elisabeth are extremely knowledgeable in their respective trades and provided us with unforgettable conversations. This island still has that innocence which is non existent elsewhere on this planet. The trust is alive here. I hope it stays this way. Change is inevitable but this remote group of Islands have preserved it and am positive will continue to do so in the years to come. Fire Pro and his youtube channel will keep us informed regarding the happenings in this part of the world.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VylZ9jpOcIQ)

Flovin, the name of the creator of the youtube channel, is only 10 years of age but a gifted musician, like his dad. He can simply on hearing an instrument play tell what note it’s playing. He has two sisters ( twins) Sunneva and Elna. One of his sisters is a gifted fisherwoman like their mother. She is only 8 and  can scoop up a fish with her bare hands right from the stream. Impressive! She also knows how to give a real good funeral to the departing souls.

Featuring – RIP Trout

There seems to  be a job available for every kid here. They know the meaning of work and don’t shy away from the challenge. For eg,  The Old School Cafe in Hvannasund.

This is a community run cafe and they are proud of it, as they should be. The cafe is actually the old school where a lot of locals and their parents studied. It goes back to 1932. A challenge was put forth to the community to come up with an idea for the now redundant school. All ideas were put through and the best idea won. That idea was to turn the school into a functioning cafe. There isn’t any formal advertisement except for an active facebook page, but you would need to know of this place to be able to stumble upon their facebook page.

https://www.facebook.com/oldschoolhvannasund/ Address: 31 Sundsvegur, Hvannasund 740, Faroe Islands

The day we visited, a young girl, probably around 11, max 12, was taking care of the register and ringing in the orders. I got talking to Myrna, a working professional and also a volunteer at the cafe, who studied at this school, just like her mother.  The kids during their summer holidays pitch in and are paid for their time. The Old school cafe hosts the same old blackboard from the years past, along with the map of the world, as old as the school. People from the village have their knit-ware displayed for sale. A great interest is shown in knowing how the visitors get to hear of the cafe.. in our case, since we like to probe into every remote bit we stumbled upon it simply by chance.  Whoever their baker is, I have to say I have never tasted such delicious chocolate cake in my life, made perfect with the combination of Vanilla ice-cream. They had me raving!

Immigrating to the Faroes is easy for the people of the Nordic countries but more and more Asians are finding their way over to this remote part of the world which one would wonder, how it is possible? We met May in Torshavn. She runs the Matstovan Seven restaurant, on the road leading to Skansin. She has been living in the Faroe Islands for the last 10 years and is married to a Faroese man.

https://www.facebook.com/MatstovanSeven Address: 21 Yviri við Strond, Tórshavn 100, Faroe Islands

May is from the little town of Haikou. The food served her is delicious but besides that the welcome you get from May is warm, caring and friendly. She has not only adopted the Faroese way of life, language but her own sweet mannerism has probably been amplified 10 times over thanks to the place she calls home. She spoke of her grandmother who is known in her hometown of Haikou to make tea and food for the weary passerby’s. She had me at that. I need to go to China now.

We will call him PJ. The Mccafe, in Saltangará is run by a Bangladeshi gentleman who, like May is married to a Faroese national. PJ met his wife in the UK while studying there. He has been living in the Faroe Islands for the past 17 years and agrees that it is a very beautiful place to live in, people are very nice and humble and there is trust amongst them. His sister lives in Canada and so he had been to the city we live in. Like May, his mannerism was quite similar to how the Faroese people are. Extremely polite, hate saying no, you literally say no for them, and very very friendly.

https://www.facebook.com/saltangara/posts_to_page/ Address :  44 Heiðavegur, Saltangará 600, Faroe Islands

It’s amusing how this blog is supposed to be about the Faroe Islands, but people make a place memorable with the experience they leave you with. On the same token, we will never forget the encounter with the famous Angry Farmer of Saksun. Jon had warmed me of the angry farmer but we never thought we would get the chance to be on the receiving end of his wrath. He is infamous for it, and basks in that negative attention he gets for fighting for his ” lost” cause. In his defence, we were completely in the wrong by being on his land, but then how else could we have met him, spying from his bedroom window- that was at least 2 kms away, sneaking up on us in his battered red van, marching down in his bottle green wellies, with a purpose in mind?

Perfect depiction of the Angry farmer and US—-> the sheep 

Faroe Islands you have shown us beauty in its real form, you have proven that heaven is a place on earth, the place as pure and rich in natural beauty and human beings as kind as you only ever hope for. All this is true. All this is real.

Visit Faroe Islands.

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Nothing like it : Faroe Islands Sitting in our cozy accommodation back in Nordagota which seems more and more like home, I am going over the gazillion of pictures I have taken of this beautiful, by far the least touched by tourists, vacation destination of our choice.