Treasure islands

IT IS approaching midsummer, and accepting an offer to go and write about the Faroes seems, at first sight, exceedingly unwise. "What's the temperature in Aberdeen?" asks the stewardess, as the plane takes off from Dyce Airport on the one-hour flight.

"Ten degrees," replies a passenger.

"Ooh, hot then!" the stewardess enthuses.

But lingering doubts are dispelled as soon as the plane swoops down through cloud, and monstrous sea-cliffs, half hidden by mist, are revealed. Waiting to greet us in the tiny airport is our guide John, a small, humorous, stocky man in his fifties. He drives us across the barren mountainous landscape of Vgar to catch the ferry for Streymo - the main island. Clinging to rocky bays are pretty, Norwegian-looking hamlets, with red, blue and yellow wooden houses. Some have peat roofs covered with grass. "Villages with more than 1500 people are called towns, so there aren't many," John says drily.

Although it is 10pm, it is still as light as midday, and after disembarking in Vestmanna we are whisked off for a boat trip. As the motor-cruiser crosses the bay, which nestles in an amphitheatre of bare hills, rowing teams are practising in miniature, Viking-style craft. Round the headland, an awesome coast appears, lined with gigantic, 500 metre-high cliffs. Carried by the gentle swell, the boat sails to the foot of cathedrals of black rock - like some kind of nautical Macchu Picchu - teeming with fulmars, kittiwakes and puffins. Hemmed in by towering, razor-sharp pinnacles, our vessel ventures under soaring sea-arches. Once we re-emerge, Palli, the captain, points out sheep grazing on almost vertical cliffs, and explains that these are summer pastures, to which they are lowered by rope. "How do they stay on?" queries sleepy, wide-eyed Anton from London, before being sea-sick.

"Left legs are longer than their right," retorts Palli. After returning to "town", we set off for Trshavn, the tiny capital. Instead of going through one of the many tunnels the Faroese have burrowed everywhere, John takes the stunning high road and soon we reach the mist-shrouded summit. "The builders had to make a detour as trolls live here," John tells us straight-faced, gesturing at huge rocks.

"Do people still believe in them?" asks Jamie - a bald, bespectacled, 43-year-old London photographer - hopefully.

"Of course!" John answers, eyes twinkling.

By the time we reach Hafnia Hotel in Trshavn, far below, it is almost midnight. However, in nearby Cafe Natur, time stopped in 1929. On the walls are dusty glass cases containing old polo helmets, goggles for flying boats, and Royal Aero Club propellers.

Sitting at candle-lit wooden tables are young people wearing white yachting caps adorned with black tassels. One of them, a blonde- haired girl whose face is flushed with joy, explains they have just graduated from college. But the bar has just closed, as has the Hafnia's by the time we return. "Ridiculous!" complains my friend to the receptionist.

A soft, bearded giant with Popeye-like arms, doesn't agree. "Young people drink too much these days," the ex-sailor responds before kindly offering to send drinks to our rooms. Times have changed; until 1992, people had to provide proof they had paid their taxes to become eligible for the quarterly allotment of alcohol, specially ordered from Copenhagen.

The next morning we tour Tinganes, by the harbour, where early settlers set up the Alting (peoples' assembly) in AD 825. It is full of alleys and colourful, doll-like houses. We are outside black, wooden, barn-like buildings, which are the Faroes' administration, when a portly man with glasses, blazer and briefcase strolls towards us. John greets him like an old friend and informs us he is Prime Minister Annfinn Kalsberg (the Faroes are a self-governing community within Denmark). "Everyone knows everyone here," he says casually.

We are driving up the hill to the Natural History Museum, when the only car behind John beeps him at traffic lights (there are only three sets in the Faroes). "People are in such a rush these days," he says, before telling us that many people still believe the islands are in Egypt - after all, they are pronounced like the Pharaohs - just as we arrive at the museum. Waiting outside is the director, Dorete. A large, grey-haired, homely-looking woman, she leads us inside. The museum records the islands' history of whaling. Standing under photos of red, blood-stained seas, Dorete skilfully, if defensively, fields our critical questions about the grindadrp - the annual killing of 1500 pilot whales. We learn its importance to the economy and the national identity. But these are not the only rationales. As a shivering Anton boards the minibus (the airline has lost most of his clothes) John jokes: "If you ate more whale meat, you wouldn't be so cold."

Kirkjubour, on the other side of mist-enveloped hills, looks south to the outer islands, a windswept cluster of black wooden houses, red windows and green grass roofs. Outside Bndagardur, the largest of these, Solva Patursson is hanging out the washing.

In her mid-40s and wearing glasses, she asserts proudly that it is 900 years old and the oldest functioning farmhouse in Europe. Inside, it is all wood. Above a blackened stove, the walls are hung with ropes, bellows and obsolete whaling spears. "It's been in the family for 16 generations, but it's not a museum," Solva explains before pointing to a long wooden table. "This we use in times of sadness and happiness, for wakes and weddings."

A few metres away is the ruined shell of Magnus Cathedral, the Faroes' most important medieval construction, although some maintain the site was occupied by St Brennan's Irish monks in the 6th century, long before the Norse arrived. At the foot of her garden is simple, white St Olav's Church, where lepers, who were forbidden entry, had to hear Mass through a hole in the wall. Outside, the silence is broken only by the quietly lapping sea, which today is behaving well; Vikings settled here, according to a Faroese joke, only because they were too seasick to sail on to Iceland.

Half-an-hour by ferry from Trshavn is Nlsoy. In the island's only village, sitting on a bench, a row of bearded old sea-dogs watch us arrive. Through a blue whale-jaw entrance, a tractor potters in an alley, and momentarily a face appears at windows draped with lace curtains. That night a sumptuous, welcoming meal is provided in one of the doll-like houses. Under the low ceiling, the room is full of chests, wicker-work chairs, delicate embroidery, and faded photos of boys in Norwegian-looking tunics and caps. The local head teacher, Gunnbor, is optimistic. "Last year, six young families with children moved in here," she declares brightly. Then everyone holds hands and does the famous, haunting Faroese chain dance.

The following morning, breakfast is waiting downstairs on the magnificent Nordlysid - a wooden, two-masted sloop moored next to fishing boats in the Lilliputian harbour. Afterwards we board its inflatable dingy, which races along the rocky east coast. Halfway back, the Nordlysid suddenly looms in the mist, like a ghostly Marie Celeste. At the helm is the skipper, Birgir. A small man with a red, raw face, he wears a sealskin hat he bought in Greenland, where he worked as a diver, laying harbour foundations. Returning to Trshavn, he says that when he was a boy all Faroese fishing boats were similar to the Nordlysid. "And these were everywhere," he laments nostalgically, pointing to the Irish-looking coracle lashed under the furled rust sails.

On our last day, the sun has finally appeared, and back on wild Vgar, where we are horse riding near the hamlet of Vatnsoyrar, we are introduced in a barn to Henge, who owns sturdy Icelandic ponies. A Russian-speaking ex-fisherman, he leads us to the top of distant, monumental-looking sea-cliffs, from which, apparently, Vikings used to throw slaves when they were too old. After crossing yellow meadows full of buttercups, the ponies struggle to keep their footing on rough moorland. Still, most of us manage not to fall off - apart from Anton, who clearly has an aversion to all forms of transport.

At last we reach the summit, where Alex shrinks back from the yawning chasm. However, the men's eyes are not on the stunning view but on a buxom, Saxon-looking girl who has mysteriously materialised on a black stallion by a glittering loch. Wearing a shaggy Faroese pullover, tight jeans and a headband, she has a pleated blonde pigtail and the world's bluest eyes.

Mesmerised, we jostle like lovesick schoolboys to sit next to her, oblivious to the sheer 250-metre drop behind. We arrive back at the barn, and our Vgar guide, Anne Marie, drives us to the toytown village of Bour, which she says has "one of the world's most fabulous views", looking west to Mykines island and, far beyond, distant Iceland. After the evening meal in our house in Vatnsoyrar, we stay up - it is the longest day of the year.

At midnight, boys are still kicking a football outside, and at 3am we are mulling over unforgettable memories of these magical islands. I realise that it is not coming here which is exceedingly unwise, it is having to leave u

GETTING THERE Atlantic Airways, Vagar Airport, Vagar (00298 333 900) fly Aberdeen-Trshavn, twice a week in summer.

GENERAL INFORMATION Contact Faroe Island Tourist Board, Gongin, Trshavn, post box 110, Trshavn (00298 315788).

PLACES TO STAY Hotels Foroyar, FO-100 Trshavn (00298 317 500) and Hafnia, Trshavn (00298 313 233) are both recommended.

BOAT TRIPS Contact Palli Lamhauge, FO-350 Vestmanna (tel 00298 424 155) for Vestmanna boat trip and Smyril Line, FO-110 Trshavn (tel 00298 315 900) to hire the sloop Nordlysid (May-Sept only).

MINI-BUS HIRE Contact Skardshamar Busskoyring, Trshavn.

Copyright 2001
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