The following morning, we clean our room and load our packs into the car for a hour-long drive under the ocean to Streymoy, to the village of Saksun in its northwestern corner. Heading past the mountain road to Tórshavn, the highway passes a roundabout and then hugs the eastern coast of the island, proceeding along Kollafjørður and then Sundini (“The Sound”), the narrow strait that separates the main islands of Streymoy and Eysturoy. We pass Hvalvík (“Whale Bay”), so named because it is ideally situated - and has a long history of involvement in - the Faroese tradition of pilot whale hunts (grindadráp).
These hunts, which date back centuries and were vital to the survival of the ocean-bound Faroese villages, were initiated by fishermen who noticed a pod of whales close to shore. Using maritime flags, they would raise a signal to those onshore - a call that spread like wildfire up and down the coast and through the valleys, carried by word of mouth and fleet-footed messengers. Within hours, hundred of small craft, sometimes from far-flung parts of the archipelago, would race to join the hunt, their mission being to corral the flighty cetaceans toward land and to beach them in a suitable place (grindaplas) - usually a bay or cove easily reachable by the villagers but difficult to escape by sea. The leaders of the hunt would need tremendous sailing prowess, organizational skill, and an intimate knowledge of the coastal landscape in order to contain the mighty creatures and successfully bring their catch to shore. Once grounded in shallow water, the whales are taken; the entire affair, bloody as it may be, is a joyous occasion for the Faroese - a symbol of the sea’s benevolence and bounty. The yield of meat and blubber from a single grindadráp, apportioned out systemically to the participants and leaders of the hunt, kept many Faroese communities alive through what would have otherwise been insurmountable winters.
Today, the grindadráp is threatened by climate change, bioaccumulation of oceanic pollutants, and misguided environmentalists alike - the latter of whom, in their protests against the killing of the great fish, have drawn considerable attention and energy away from the forces that threaten both the animals they claim to protect, and the islanders who have lived sustainably beside them for centuries - and built monuments, dedicated museums, and named villages and bodies of water for these magnificent, savior creatures. Surely, a more profound respect for their sacrifice than we first-world cosmopolites display for our factory-raised, machine-killed hordes of livestock.
Passing Hvalvík, we leave the highway and turn onto a single-lane country road that winds through a long green valley. The sun is out, and the pastures sparkles with morning dew. More than once, we stop to allow a roadside crossing of sheep, imperturbable and unhurried. A few miles down this road takes us through the island’s interior, to the little crofting community of Saksun, which is comprised of a church, a farm, and a collection of turf houses overlooking a tidal lagoon near the northwest coast. We leave the car in a small parking lot and set off on foot to explore the area.
The wind is howling as we approach the small, peat-roof church on the hilltop. Saksun is located in what was formerly an inlet of the sea, before a powerful winter storm and subsequent landslide in in the late 1600s blocked the path to the ocean and turned the harbor into a sheltered tidal lagoon. Now, the lagoon is only accessible to small boats at high tide, while at low tide, a dark volcanic beach becomes exposed. The mountains form a bowl around the valley, funneling gusts of harsh oceanic air into the village. Jane pulls a scarf over her face as I take some quick pictures of the scene across the valley - the sheep grazing placidly along the grassy hills, the cataract rolling down the face of the opposing mountain, and the brackish water of the lagoon, whipped into little waves. After admiring a pair of horses in front of the nearby farmhouse, we move across the village and descend down a gravel walking track along the southern side of the valley. Following a herd of goats along a pleasantly burbling stream, we reach the lagoon at low tide. Jane proceeds along the cliff path toward the ocean, while I take photos of the lake and the waterfall. Afterward, we return to the car and resume the main highway along the eastern coast of Streymoy.
Passing the road bridge to Eysturoy, we continue north toward the village of Tjørnuvík. In about three miles, just by the roadside, we catch our first glimpse of Fossa (“The Falls”), formed by a river from the mountainous interior of Streymoy. Plunging into the ocean in two tiers over a total of 140 meters, Fossa is technically the highest waterfall in the country - though we were seeing it in a fairly unimpressive, dry condition. We leave the car at a small turnoff and climb down the basalt stone to the base of the lower falls, where I take some photos of Jane from the foot of the stream. Then, turning up the hillside, we clamber up a grassy slope and navigate a thin sheep trail up to the second basalt rim, where we see the multiple veils of the upper falls. As we descend from the cliffside, we’re treated to a a picturesque but vertigo-inducing view of the strait between Streymoy and Eysturoy - the road stretching away beyond the horizon on both coasts.
Back in the car, we return south and cross the water to Eysturoy (“Eastern Island”), stopping at the little gas station on the other side - near the settlement of Norðskáli - for pastries, drinks, and a toilet break. As we breakfast on danishes and sliced cheese in the back seat of the car, we watch a lone female hiker up the road try, unsuccessfully, to flag a ride for several minutes - and so we pull out of the gas station parking lot on a mission. I roll down the windows as we come to stop beside her. “We’re headed to Ei-di. Where are you headed?” I say in perfect American. “Oh! Ei-yeh?” she says, teaching us how to actually pronounce the Faroese glide consonant. “That would be perfect. I’m headed to Slættaratindur.” She hops into the backseat, and we take off up the western coast of the island. Our passenger is a German exchange student, here in the Faroes for a summer semester, studying tourism and hospitality in Tórshavn. She spent her Sunday morning hitchhiking here from the capital, and she plans to continue to the foot of the islands’ tallest mountain, complete the two-hour summit hike, and catch a ride back to the city by nightfall. “I almost slept in. I was thinking, anyways, I have the whole summer,” she tells us. “But when I woke and saw how blue the skies were, I knew it was a perfect chance to climb the mountain.” We entertain her with stories of Baltimore, and of getting nearly trapped in Munich and Düsseldorf, and she laughs at the English voice on our GPS. We leave her where the highway forks above Eiði, with one road descending to the coastal village, and the other road hair-pinning up the mountainside toward the high peaks of northern Eysturoy. Jane and I plan to explore Eiði’s beach and climb to the top of its seaside mount (Eiðiskollur), so Slættaratindur will have to wait. “From up there, you can see me if I’m still walking in a few hours,” says our German friend cheerily as she climbs out of the car. “Hopefully not!” we say as we bid her farewell. She proceeds up the hill, thumb out to the road, as we enter the village.
Shimmering like a rainbow under the mid-day sun, Eiði (“Isthmus”) is a seaside town out of a postcard. True to its name, it is located at the northwest corner of Eysturoy, its colorful houses laid into a hillside that overlooks the strait to the south and the Atlantic Ocean to the north. It is sheltered from the open ocean by a small lagoon and cove, while the imposing sea cliff of Eiðiskollur (“Eiði’s Headland”) rises precipitously to the west. To the east, the lake Eiðisvatn is set in the foothills of Eysturoy’s high peaks, and a stream from the lake flows into a hydroelectric dam that powers the village. We drive through the village’s narrow lanes, past the white-steepled church which, as one of the settlement’s oldest extant buildings, dates back to the 17th century. Winding our way past the lagoon at the outskirts of town, we park near the town’s soccer field (doubling as an RV park for weekend vacationers from the capital) and spend time exploring a rocky cove that opens up to Eysturoy’s northern coast. Jane hops on down to the water, while I search in and around the tide pools for interesting compositions. With the pounding of the surf, the cries of the guillemots and gulls circling overhead, and the howl of the wind sweeping down from the mountains, the Faroese shoreline is ever a noisy place.
After replacing my batteries in the car, we drive back to the highest point in town and park at the end of a residential street, where a sheep gate leads us to a walking path northward along the headland. Following a series of stone cairns, we climb the hillside to the top of the cliff, passing through a section of boggy grass and up the spine of the sea mount, using a staircase of dirt steps kicked into the mountainside. I follow closely behind Jane, but the wind gusts drown out all audible conversation. At the top where the slope levels off, we pass under the mast of an old radar tower - a holdover from the days of the Faroes’ military occupation during the Second World War. Near the summit, we stop for a break (and shelter from the wind) in an concrete bunker whose window offers a stunning view toward the tops of Slættaratindur and Gráfelli - the Faroes’ two highest mountains. We try in vain to spot our friend the German hitchhiker, who has hopefully made it to the trailhead beneath the mountain by this point in the early afternoon.
At the end of the trail, our walk dead-ends into a 1000-foot drop into the ocean below. To our west, the village of Tjørnuvík on Streymoy is a mass of colorful dots nestled against the ocean, and the sheer cliffs of Streymoy and Vágar beyond look enormous in comparison. We sit on the grass and crawl as close to the edge of the mountain as we dare. Under us, the guano-peppered rock wall, the seabirds whirling about hundreds of feets below, and the points of sunlight glimmering on the ocean - impossibly fake and far-appearing - make for an incredibly vertiginous experience. Down at the base of the mount, we see the sea stacks of Risin og Kellingin (“The Giant and the Hag”) rising out of the ocean - each several hundred feet tall themselves, but laughably small from our vantage point. According to Faroese mythology, the Giants of Iceland were envious of the Faroes’ beauty, so sent the Giant and his wife to steal the islands and bring them back. One night, the pair of them swam across the North Atlantic, and the Giant waited in the sea off the coast of Eysturoy while his wife climbed Eiðiskollur to begin lashing the mountains together with a heavy rope. However, though they pushed and pulled with all their might, the Giant and his wife could not budge the massive islands, and when the first light of dawn broke upon them, the two turned to stone - the Giant looming imposingly in the water, and his wife, mid-stride, in a vain attempt to leap from the mountain and reunite with her husband before they met their fate. There they have stood for centuries - and will stand until the wind, waves, and winter storms carry them off in the coming centuries. Such are the lovely legends that animate the Faroese landscape.
After we descend the mount (Jane going quickly, and I going much more slowly with a painful right knee after crab-stepping my way along the steep slopes to Drangarnir), we leave town and take the mountain pass that cuts across the island from Eiði to Funningur. Along the way, we stop for photos next to a roadside shepherd’s hut looking over Eiðisvatn, and pass under the shadow of Slættaratindur. Jane falls asleep as we descend from the mountains and proceed along the western shore of Funningsfjørður, past another fishing village of the same name, at the fjord’s head. Proceeding south, we rejoin the highway from Streymoy and continue along another long tendril of water - Skálafjørður, the Faroes’ largest fjord which cuts a gaping swath through Eysturoy’s southern end. Halfway along the fjord, we turn beneath the peak of Støðlafjall and sweep up and down another mountain pass, descending into the municipality of Gøta - named after the legendary heathen Viking chief Tróndur í Gøtu, who hailed from this settlement in the 10th century A.D, and whose opposition to the spread of Christianity through the Faroes made him the villain of the Færeyinga Saga.
Gøta itself is split into a series of settlements that dot the lower eastern coast of Eysturoy - including Gøtugjógv and Syðrugøta, and Norðragøta. We stop at the northern village; our home for the next 5 nights is the ground floor of a wooden house near the edge of Norðragøta, just down the road from its gas station. It is the last stop before highway proceeds to Leirvík and the Faroes’ second undersea tunnel, which connects to the Northern Islands of the archipelago. Norðragøta itself is a pleasant settlement at the foot of a broad valley flanked by mountains on two sides and ocean on another. Like every other Faroese town and village, it has an old wooden church, a football pitch, a museum housing local curiosities and bits of history, and a small co-op and grocery store. It being Sunday, the grocer has limited evening hours for the Sabbath, so after we stop by the house (and find it completely unlocked as is typical, but with no hosts at home to welcome us), we stroll down to the gas station to buy iced coffee drinks, ice cream bars, and pair of freshly baked ciabatta buns topped with ham, cheese, and pepperoni.
After a short time and a snack in the backseat, we see our host Jón walking down the road in a football jersey, on his way down to the stadium to cheer on the local team in their playoff game in the Faroe Premier League. Jón’s parents, Sunneva and Flóvin, occupy the top floor of the house. Jón apologizes for the wait and shows us into our spacious apartment, which comes equipped with a refrigerator, a full kitchen with induction stovetops, a cozy bed, and broad double-paned windows that look out into the valley, and into his parents’ vegetable garden. After stashing our food in the fridge and charging our electronics, Jane and I settle in for an afternoon nap.
In the early evening, Jane and I stroll down the village lane to the grocery store, where we re-stock our sandwich supplies (a new bottle of remoulade) and buy fish cakes to grill and frozen vegetables to sauté with butter on the stovetop. Fish cake, evidently, is quite popular among the protein-hungry Faroese, and it tastes quite like the Japanese and Korean products that Jane and I are used to tossing in our soups and stir-frys - a little taste of home from far, far away. We assemble and devour a good dinner spread before heading out again for sunset. A few minutes away, we stop on a nearby hilltop just below Støðlafjall, at a dirt road turn-off that leads down into the village and offers beautiful views out to sea, to the eastern edge of Eysturoy, and beyond it to the neighboring island of Borðoy. The outfield here, as in much of the Faroes, is dotted by sheep and glacial erratics, and I have a fun time photographing them while my primary camera runs a timelapse of the view across the road - the pyramidal peak of Ritafjall basked in the golden, red, and mauve shades of sunset radiating through the valley. As the light wanes, we see a trio of Faroese teenagers descending from the ridge of Støðlafjall, their presence announced by what I can only assume is Faroese rap playing on a shoulder-mounted boombox. They nod at us before heading downhill into the village - teenagers like teenagers everywhere, out for a casual stroll up and down a mountain on a Sunday afternoon. Jane and I head back to the house as dusk falls, and go to bed in preparation for another island sunrise.
