Geography is an important subject in the middle school years at HPS. My teachers, Mr. Madani and then Mr. Solomon Jacob drilled the names of a lot of places into our poor heads. So I was surprised that I had never heard of the Faroe Islands till January of this year when Vanessa posted one of those lists on Facebook - fifty amazing places to visit or something like that. I forwarded the list to Jo with a tag "Where to go in 2014?" She liked this photo and ordered a book from Amazon. And here we are.
One morning earlier this week we boarded the ferry at Sovargur which made it's way past the Gasadalur falls (from that list) to the island of Mykines. And here is Evan snoozing on the ferry. When we arrived he was fast asleep, naturally. He had to be carried up the 100 or so precarious steps from the wave-battered rocky jetty up to the village where our trail started.
Mykines is the westernmost of the 18 Faroe islands and has 11 permanent inhabitants. In summer it is connected by the ferry and a helicopter service, but if the weather goes south so do they. People have been stuck there for days. There is one hostel with a handful of beds that need to be reserved ahead of time. No restaurants. No stores. The island is rocky. The trails are narrow and slippery and the cliffs are towering. Jo was nervous and on the verge of calling it off the evening before.
A Faroese man on the ferry warned us to keep the children close to us. He had a five year old son who wasn't yet allowed to run around. The cliffs were too dangerous, he said.
The climb out of the village was straight up a steep but very wide grassy slope. If you slipped and fell, you would roll back to the village. A good confidence builder. When we got to the top we saw our first puffins right away. And the wind almost blew us off the other side - a straight long drop to the ocean.
Then we stopped at the memorial erected in 1939 for nine sailors who were lost at sea. And then there is the story of the storm in 1595 that shipwrecked fifty boats and killed every working man on the island. Explains some of Jo's nervousness. To help assuage her anxiety I had stopped at a grocery store in Torshavn the night before and loaded up on junk. Chocolate bars, fried pork rinds, cheese, crackers. And apples for good measure. We ate our first round of snacks, though we weren't hungry, but simply because we were on an island with no food. Got. To. Eat.
After the snack we hiked up that path you can see above Vivian's head in the photo. The island is narrow here. One one side you have a nice slope and then a drop to the rocks below. On the other it's a vertical cliff all the way. We kept the kids very close. Puffins here are there but we didn't look too much. Then the cliffs widened a bit - enough to put in a narrow trail of uneven stone steps and a steel cable as a handrail with the ocean down below. Jo took Evan's hand. Vivian managed herself. I took photos. We clambered to a wider saddle of sorts - just in time for another snack break.
This stop was magical. The views were astounding - but we had gotten somewhat used to that. There were puffins sitting around up and down the green grassy slopes. And then there was a swarm of puffins that wheeled around the cliff and back down past us about once a minute. When they went by the sound was like someone exhaling in your ear. We walked some more, down towards the bridge over a rocky crevasse. The place was thick with puffins. Many were returning with several silvery sand eels hanging down from their orange beaks like fat little whiskers. They waddled into their burrows to feed their fledgelings who made a very curious noise like a gasoline powered weed whacker being operated about half a mile away.
After a few more snack breaks we were back at the village. Vivian and Evan sat and played at a dilapidated foot bridge. This is the oldest settlement in the Faroe Islands. Irish monks had moved in here in the 7th century. Next came the Vikings. Towards the end of the world war, the Brits had a radar station here. It's the only place in the Faroe where St. Patrick's Day is celebrated. The one room school has a single student. He is fifteen. When he graduates and moves on the school will close down.
One morning earlier this week we boarded the ferry at Sovargur which made it's way past the Gasadalur falls (from that list) to the island of Mykines. And here is Evan snoozing on the ferry. When we arrived he was fast asleep, naturally. He had to be carried up the 100 or so precarious steps from the wave-battered rocky jetty up to the village where our trail started.
Mykines is the westernmost of the 18 Faroe islands and has 11 permanent inhabitants. In summer it is connected by the ferry and a helicopter service, but if the weather goes south so do they. People have been stuck there for days. There is one hostel with a handful of beds that need to be reserved ahead of time. No restaurants. No stores. The island is rocky. The trails are narrow and slippery and the cliffs are towering. Jo was nervous and on the verge of calling it off the evening before.
A Faroese man on the ferry warned us to keep the children close to us. He had a five year old son who wasn't yet allowed to run around. The cliffs were too dangerous, he said.
The climb out of the village was straight up a steep but very wide grassy slope. If you slipped and fell, you would roll back to the village. A good confidence builder. When we got to the top we saw our first puffins right away. And the wind almost blew us off the other side - a straight long drop to the ocean.
Then we stopped at the memorial erected in 1939 for nine sailors who were lost at sea. And then there is the story of the storm in 1595 that shipwrecked fifty boats and killed every working man on the island. Explains some of Jo's nervousness. To help assuage her anxiety I had stopped at a grocery store in Torshavn the night before and loaded up on junk. Chocolate bars, fried pork rinds, cheese, crackers. And apples for good measure. We ate our first round of snacks, though we weren't hungry, but simply because we were on an island with no food. Got. To. Eat.
After the snack we hiked up that path you can see above Vivian's head in the photo. The island is narrow here. One one side you have a nice slope and then a drop to the rocks below. On the other it's a vertical cliff all the way. We kept the kids very close. Puffins here are there but we didn't look too much. Then the cliffs widened a bit - enough to put in a narrow trail of uneven stone steps and a steel cable as a handrail with the ocean down below. Jo took Evan's hand. Vivian managed herself. I took photos. We clambered to a wider saddle of sorts - just in time for another snack break.
This stop was magical. The views were astounding - but we had gotten somewhat used to that. There were puffins sitting around up and down the green grassy slopes. And then there was a swarm of puffins that wheeled around the cliff and back down past us about once a minute. When they went by the sound was like someone exhaling in your ear. We walked some more, down towards the bridge over a rocky crevasse. The place was thick with puffins. Many were returning with several silvery sand eels hanging down from their orange beaks like fat little whiskers. They waddled into their burrows to feed their fledgelings who made a very curious noise like a gasoline powered weed whacker being operated about half a mile away.
After a few more snack breaks we were back at the village. Vivian and Evan sat and played at a dilapidated foot bridge. This is the oldest settlement in the Faroe Islands. Irish monks had moved in here in the 7th century. Next came the Vikings. Towards the end of the world war, the Brits had a radar station here. It's the only place in the Faroe where St. Patrick's Day is celebrated. The one room school has a single student. He is fifteen. When he graduates and moves on the school will close down.
All this and more was explained by the same Faroese man who had cautioned us about the kids and the cliffs on the ferry. He had bought a home on Mykines built in the 1830's as a second home. He pointed to the "new" homes from the 1920's and explained how the town expanded during that time. He had just put in a new turf roof. He said ti should last for the rest of his life and if managed carefully, for his son's life too. "Why did you buy this house?" I asked. "To get away from Torshavn" he said. Torshavn has 18,000 residents. It's Europe's tiniest capital city. It's parliament building is a small single storied white wooden house. Not exactly a bustling city. "I want to get this house fixed so we can spend a winter here" he continued. "Sometimes the weather in winter is so bad you can get lost trying to go to your neighbor's house." (the streets are about 3 feet wide and the houses and clustered close to each other). "What will you do all winter?" I pressed. "Read Dostoyevsky" he said simply. The farther of the two houses in the photo below - the one with the new turf roof is his.
While I was chatting away, Jo took the kids to the "dam" upstream. There was a small crowd of Faroese sitting there eating snacks and drinking something warm from a thermos. Our kids wanted to get in the water. Jo stripped them to their underwear and the kids stepped into the water. And stepped out. It was too cold. About that time a middle aged woman took two tween girls into the water. They found it cold too. She explained that they needed to get their shoulders wet. They squirmed and goofed around but in a little while I saw them in water up to their necks.
When Vivian and Evan dried off and put on their clothes someone asked "Too cold?" We nodded. "Not Vikings" they said, with friendly smiles. Jo muttered under her breath "Come to Texas in summer you Vikings and I'll show you."
The ferry ride back was something. The wind had whipped up the waves which drenched me and a couple of others who had no place to sit. Jo had managed to wedge the kids up to the back of the bridge house where they promptly feel asleep. Later a young woman made room for Jo so she could sit next to Evan and hold his head up. Then it started raining.
But the day had gone well and we were relaxed. This is pretty much what I had hoped for when I saw that very first photo of Gasadalur falls almost eight months ago.
While I was chatting away, Jo took the kids to the "dam" upstream. There was a small crowd of Faroese sitting there eating snacks and drinking something warm from a thermos. Our kids wanted to get in the water. Jo stripped them to their underwear and the kids stepped into the water. And stepped out. It was too cold. About that time a middle aged woman took two tween girls into the water. They found it cold too. She explained that they needed to get their shoulders wet. They squirmed and goofed around but in a little while I saw them in water up to their necks.
When Vivian and Evan dried off and put on their clothes someone asked "Too cold?" We nodded. "Not Vikings" they said, with friendly smiles. Jo muttered under her breath "Come to Texas in summer you Vikings and I'll show you."
The ferry ride back was something. The wind had whipped up the waves which drenched me and a couple of others who had no place to sit. Jo had managed to wedge the kids up to the back of the bridge house where they promptly feel asleep. Later a young woman made room for Jo so she could sit next to Evan and hold his head up. Then it started raining.
But the day had gone well and we were relaxed. This is pretty much what I had hoped for when I saw that very first photo of Gasadalur falls almost eight months ago.
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