Where water flows upwards

D.H. Lawrence once wrote a story called “The Man Who Loved Islands”, in which his protagonist, a Mr. Cathcart, seeks to avoid the complexities of human interaction by moving to progressively smaller, more isolated islands.

That doesn’t end too well for him, but I must confess to a similar penchant for islands – never the tropical kind – but the wilder and more windswept variety.

The Faroe Islands fitted the bill perfectly, and I’d always wanted to visit.

In Italian, they are pronounced Far-oh-eh – a small linguistic detail that became a running joke with my Italian partner, as whenever I’d tell him where I was planning to visit, he’d insist on hearing only that I was going “far away”. It was difficult to argue. The Faroes do feel quite ‘far away’: a cluster of islands in the North Atlantic that many people have heard of, but relatively few have visited.

In actual fact, they’re not that difficult to reach – a direct flight from Copenhagen, London,Reykjavik or Edinburgh, a skilled pilot and the stomach for the odd bit of turbulence will get you there easily enough.

The islands sit between Iceland, Norway and Scotland, an archipelago of 18 surrounded by some of the most dramatic seas in the world. They are an autonomous territory that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, with their own parliament (its tiny building in the capital, Tórshavn, is not much bigger than a house), their own language and distinct cultural identity.

Historians believe they were first inhabited by Irish monks in the 6th century, and then Viking settlers arrived in the 9th, bringing with them their traditions, beliefs and determination to survive in a landscape that can be both breathtakingly beautiful and brutally harsh.

The landscape is almost impossible to describe without sounding exaggerated. Mountains rise sharply from the ocean, tiny villages sit tucked into valleys and waterfalls plunge over cliffs into the sea; water really does flow upwards here, lifted by the wind in dramatic sprays. The weather moves quickly, and mist and rain give way to brilliant sunshine within minutes. The islands are in a kind of constant conversation with the elements. The Faroese themselves call their islands ‘the Land of Maybe’. You could read that in two ways: as ‘the land of possibility’ or as the land of ‘maybe it’ll happen or maybe it won’t: it all depends on the weather’.

The houses also reflect the same story. The traditional Faroese turf-roofed homes emerge from the landscape, and their grass-covered roofs blend into the surrounding hills. They are beautiful, but they were never designed simply for aesthetics. The thick layers of turf provided insulation and protection against the Atlantic weather and some of the strongest winds in Europe, creating warm shelters in a challenging environment.

I grew up in Wales – a country with more sheep than people – and I felt right at home in the Faroes, with its 80,000 sheep for a human population of around 54,000. They are everywhere: on hillsides, wandering along roads and even starring in a “Sheep View” project, where the highly inventive Faroese government put GoPros on sheep to raise the profile of the Faroe Islands in the absence of Google Maps Street View. The Faroes’ very name, Føroyar, means ‘sheep islands’.

Sheep farming has always been central to Faroese life, providing wool (‘Faroese gold’) for the community-based knitting clubs that are spread all over the islands and providing a reliable source of food in tough times.

Food here still has a direct relationship with the land. One thing that struck me was how closely connected Faroese people remain to what they eat. This is not a place where food production is anonymous or sanitised. People fish, raise animals and mostly slaughter their own livestock. There is an understanding that food comes with responsibility, and that meat and fish are not simply products, but part of a wider relationship with nature. It has to be said, however, that the only vegetarians in the Faroes are probably the sheep themselves.

Some traditional foods might be a bit difficult for a visitor, even for a girl who grew up eating lamb, like me. There is dried sheep meat, a Faroese speciality (basically a ‘sheep prosciutto’) where the meat is hung in a hjallur (drying shed) and goes through various stages of drying and fermentation. It’s a hard taste to acquire.

More pleasant (if controversial) is whale meat. The Faroese tradition of pilot whale hunting, known as grind, has existed for centuries and remains a complex subject. For many Faroese people, it represents heritage, community and a historic connection to the sea, but at the same time, it attracts international criticism. My feeling is that it is mainly because it is so visible. Japan and Norway both practise commercial whaling, but far offshore, unseen by most of us, and so it barely registers on the consciousness of travellers eager to visit those countries. In the Faroe Islands, the grind
slaughter is not hidden; it is completely out in the open. It is also entirely non-commercial, with the meat eaten only by the Faroese on special occasions (graduations, weddings) – which is probably for the best, as doctors are always telling people to keep their whale meat eating down (mercury, etc.).

Fishing in general is one of the islands’ most important industries, and generations of Faroese people have depended on the ocean for survival. The waters surrounding the islands offer communities both  livelihoods and a sense of identity. The sea connects the different islands as much as it separates them. And here is a strange contrast – the Faroe Islands are spread over a fairly small geographical area, but every island has its own identity, even its own dialect. At the same time, everything feels interconnected. In a place this small, everyone seems linked through family or shared history. Everyone is someone’s cousin or uncle. Some islands are only accessible by boat – one only by helicopter – but others are linked by sophisticated infrastructure like undersea tunnels.

I think the most important takeaway is that the islands are not a museum piece or a frozen Viking relic. Modern Faroese life is sophisticated, creative and constantly evolving. The Faroese travel far and wide. Most young people go to university in Denmark. There are excellent restaurants in the capital (even one with two Michelin stars), ambitious young people, contemporary design and a growing interest in welcoming visitors, but without losing the traditions that make the islands distinctive.

I left with a feeling of something that I haven’t felt in a long time: community. People make their own entertainment, they create initiatives, they interact with each other and they rely on each other. It resembles both where I grew up and the country where the other half of my family is from – Ireland – in that there’s always someone willing to tell you a tall tale, whether about family members, mysterious fairy folk, drunken escapades or centuries-old legends, and offer a bit of hospitality and curiosity to a visitor.

Mr Cathcart in Lawrence’s story kept searching for a smaller and quieter island, hoping to escape the complications of human connection. The Faroes taught me the opposite lesson: even at the edge of the Atlantic, we don’t escape each other; we find each other.